Lapbooking on a Shoestring

A lapbook or lap book is basically an educational learning tool made from a folder. They may also be referred to as shutterbooks, graphic organizers, fold books, presentation books, flap books, and project books. They can be done at the close of your unit studies to highlight key points the kids have learned - a place to glue projects or little books they've made for the unit, be based solely on a book your child has just read or help reinforce mathematical functions. Use it to document what your children have learned or even to display and refer back to. Some people prefer to buy kits ready to put together while others may use blank templates to help create, and still others come up with a design of their own. We've done all kinds of lapbooks - and from what we've found, there is no wrong way to put together a lapbook. I personally prefer some type of order in how they look. The information inside is only limited by imagination. The links below show you how to make the folds and show examples.

If you have a lapbooking website or blog !

Amazon.com Widgets

Kidsgardening Making Field Journals.

Living Literature with Lapbook Learning.

Angi and her dd show their Earth Science Lapbook with lots of pictures. It gives you ideas to help you make your own. Also see her early lapbooks here.

Earth Science Lapbook from Highland Heritage.

Lapbooks By Us shows how one family made lapbooks for different unit studies as well as FIAR. Thanks to Suzanne

Free projects from Making Books with Children include items such as a wish scroll, stick and elastic book, step book and more.

Our Homeschool Style: Lapbooking is a blog from a family who discovered lapbooking a couple of years ago and it has evolved to become the main source of structure in their eclectic homeschool. They have lots of pictures of lapbooks they've done.

Create your own portfolder using poster board instead of file folders.

Graphic organizers you can print to use in your lapbooks.

Lapbook Fever - A personalized visual book

GoogleGroups: Lapbooking with Freebies is a topic based lapbook group where members work together to compile a free set of lapbook materials. All materials sent to the group must be Free.

YahooGroups: Lapbooking This list is for all who are interested in making lapbooks with their children.

Get started with lapbooks at YahooGroups: Lapbooking101

YahooGroup:Lapbooking7up is for those lapbooking with kids ages 12-up.

Book Suggestions

Dinah Zike The Big Book of Books and Activities.

Double Lapbook

How to make a double folder Lapbook.

YouTube Lapbook Lessons: Double Lapbook

Folds

Women's Studio Workshop describes many types of folds that might be used.

Mini-Books, Flaps, Folds and More has links that teach you how to make mini-books and flaps of all kinds.

Make Your Own Book has some simple, step-by-step instructions with illustrations to show you how to make some creative and fun.

YouTube Lapbook Lessons: Kite book or triangle fold

How to make a layered book

YouTube Lapbook Lessons: How to make a layered book

Lapbook Supplies

You can use many things in your lapbooks but these companies sell items for lapbookers. Many of them have free samples on their websites.

Homeschool In the Woods has great historical timeline figures to assist in your lapbooks, notebooks, scrapbooks, games and anything else you can think of.

Dinah Zike shows books and folds in the Big Book of Books and Activities and for extra assistance has a video on how to use the book.

Tobin's Lab has The Ultimate Lap Book Handbook, 104 Lap Book Ideas CD ROM, and the Tammy Teaches Lapbooks DVD to help you with your lapbook making.

In the Hands of a Child brings the excitement of hands-on learning to life with Project Packs and Research Packs for students of all ages. Each of the completed projects fits neatly into a file folder; storage is simple and the projects become wonderful keepsakes with an educational value. They also have a quarterly freebie!

Notebooking / Journaling

Notebooking, or Journaling is creatively collecting information in a notebook. If you use a 3-ring binder you can easily add or remove pages. We put our unit studies into notebooks. Angi posts how they've done a history notebook and she uses ProClick Binding machine that has re-openable spines that lock closed to insure secure binding. Notebooking allows a child to have fun while progressing in every area of learning. Samples of journal pages.

NotebookingPages.com offers free homeschool resources such as notebooking pages, lapbooking templates, and many other printables.

YahooGroups: Notebooking is for homeschoolers with an interest in notebooking. For novice to advanced notebookers, ask questions, share resources, pass along favorite tips and ideas.

To Notebook, Lapbook or Scrapbook. This article from Knowledge Quest discusses the similarities and differences of each method of how your child's work has been documented or displayed.

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