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Friday, August 8, 2008

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.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'm thinking of doing that lapbook as well, and it would be my first one. My question is this, I saw all the templates on the site, but there were no instructions on how to make the book that you glue all these little booklets on??? What am I missing? How do I know what size to make the book? Can you help me, please???

Dee in Sunny FL!
rebel4jesus25@hotmail.com

Please email me...

Marcy Muser said...

Carletta,

You're a woman after my own heart! And I love the picture of Isaiah.

Thanks so much for the link. I may try it myself if I can get my 12-year-old to agree (my 8-year-old will agree to almost anything, but my middle-schooler - well, that's a different story!). :)

Unknown said...

Carletta,

Great post. Lapbooking is a bit "out of the box." At least that's how it should be. :-)
Glad you gave it a try. I'm a big believer in allowing children to go on tangents, to create, and to explore.

And the blue mouth! Priceless!

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness! Just look at that face. Priceless! :)

Anonymous said...

Carletta,
You have a great site and blog.I too love the idea of lap-booking but I never got around to it. I put a link to your website from my blog...Pure Homeschooling. Your family is precious. And I enjoy reading your input over on yahoo answers.

God Bless,
Jana