Lapbooking

I'm not a fan of lapbooking for several reasons, all of which relate to the following defaults in my character:

1. Laziness - Lapbooks require much more prep work and instructional time than pulling a page from an Abeka workbook. The thought of finding, organizing and scheduling resources for lapbooks makes me feel overwhelmed and just plain tired.

2. Impatience - I'm a "time's ticking, let's get moving" kinda gal, and that mindset doesn't work well for unit studies or lapbook projects. Can you imagine? "Stop asking questions, and focus on cutting your printables!"

3. Perfectionism - Unfortunately, children learn more from projects when they are the ones who actually do the work. When we work on projects, I inevitably have to bite my tongue to keep myself from saying things like, "You're using waaay too much glue!" or "Are you sure you don't want Mommy to cut that for you."

Nevertheless, I saw Candace post about this free Summer Olympic 2008 Lapbook, and since we'd already scrapped our plans to start school this month, I thought this would be a good time to give lapbooking a try.

Yesterday, I made a loose schedule, printed some lapbook templates, and checked out some books from the library. The kids colored their lapbook covers and glued their Bible verses inside. And Drew and I took turns reading from the DK book, Going for Gold, by Drew Donkin.


Isaiah obviously didn't have enough supervision during our little project. He ate a blue marker.


This is very out of the box for us, but I can already see the benefits of lapbooking. It has forced me to slow down and spend more time interacting with my children, and it has helped them become excited about the Olympics.

I'll keep you posted about our progress over the next few weeks.