Thursday, January 8, 2009

Our First Lapbooks!!

So what's a lapbook? Well, welcome to the world of home school lingo. A lapbook is a simple file folder that is filled with mini books that your children use to reinforce what they have learned. The children complete and fill in the mini books after they learn a concept and then compile all the mini books into their folder. I am a member of a couple online lapbooking groups because I think the concept sounds fun for the kids and it is crafty in a way, so I thought it would be fun for us to try.


Over Christmas we decided to try our first lapbook. When Sissy was in public school the librarian had read the book "Snowflake Bentley" by Jacqueline Briggs Martin to the class. She had remembered that she really liked the book and wanted to read it again. We checked it out at the library and low and behold I found that Homeschool Share had a free Snowflake Bentley lapbook just waiting for us!





To start with we read the book, a great book all about how badly Wilson Bentley wanted to share the world of snowflakes with others and how he learned to photograph snowflakes. After we read the book I printed the mini books I thought we would enjoy from the above website. I chose mini books like "Where is Vermont?" (Mr. Bentley was from Vermont). This mini book was basically a map of the US, so the girls colored the state of Vermont. "Things I Like to Do Outside in the Snow" allowed the girls to write a sentence (proper spelling of course!) of what they like to do outside. There was even a science experiment in which they packed a jar full of snow (we have plenty of that!), measured it, let it melt and then discovered if the water that was left was less than, equal to or more than the snow that we put into the jar.


For Sissy I chose the mini book called "Snowflake Math", in which she had to complete some math problems and follow the secret code to learn that "Snow forms when ice crystals in a cloud bump into each other and stick together". She really enjoyed this exercise because she likes math and secret codes!



Both of the girls also did a mini book of "Snowflake Similes" and learned what a simile is and how to write them. The fun part was that they got to make paper snowflakes of their own and include those!



This book was a great topic filled with cute pictures, wonderful history and science information as well. The kids loved the book and as we were finishing Megan said to me, "This is fun! I hope we do more of these later!"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello, I have loved reading about your start into homeschooling. I am on the same path as you and am about to start my 2 boys (10 and 7) at the beginning of our school year (in 3 weeks- we are in Australia) We are also Christians and I am a primary teacher. You may be comforted to know that I am now going through all the questioning and doubting you wrote about when you started!! I am looking forward to it but I am also a little apprehensive. Thanks for sharing your insights and thoughts.
Rene