We’ve loved lapbooking for years! With two crafty daughters, lapbooking is the perfect way to gather and reinforce information we have been learning. In the Hands of a Child http://www.handsofachild.com/ has a huge variety of pre-made studies that keep lapbooking easy and fun. My girls’ favorite school project ever was their Cinderella stories unit study. With its helpful schedule and study guide, it led us through Cinderella stories from multiple cultures, countries and time periods. The astronomy lapbook helped us synthesize some
difficult information, like star classifications. We typically use the pre-made folds, often printing them on colorful paper so the finished product is visually inviting. Sometimes, using the folds we have learned from the pre-made products, my girls add their own cuts, folds, and booklets to add even more information. Then taking the finished product to show grandma makes them think through the information yet again, helping hem store it in their memory banks.
Using the Five In a Row and Before Five in a Row curriculum I added lapbooking to the the book activities in our co-op when my children were small. We used the traditional file folders and In the Hands of a Child kits that corresponded. I still like to peek back at the sweet, garbled handwriting and gobs of extra glue on those lapbooks!
In the Hands of a Child sent me a free lapbook to review. We chose “Honinh Your Study Skills”. With a fifth and eighth grader, this is a skill that must be learned for academic success in the future. The tips have already helped my girls manage their time better and our past few school week have gone smoother as a result! Their favorite part was making the study tips poster and (of course) the activity where you make a healthy study snack.
We chose to change this lapbook project up a bit and, instead of using file folders to paste our folds and little pockets of information into, we three hole punched colorful cardstock and put it into paper pocket folders for a Study Skills Notebook.
I thought my kids had pretty good study skills before this lapbook study, but the act of writing out their own schedule (versus following mine) and thinking through how to set themselves up for success (especially studying for a test) has been invaluable. And I m confident that if I had read them lists or books on studying, without the simple sound bytes and practice and reinforcement of putting together a lapbook, it would have gone in one ear and out the other. Honing Your Study Skills lapbook is a good use of your time because it will save time in the end. And I am all about efficiency!
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