Lapbooks

Christina,

I have four children (two dds who are very visual), so I bought a lapbook CD to use for a study of Ancient Rome. I thought it sounded great, but we ended up ditching the whole thing for a couple of reasons…

1)It was a LOT of busy work for them to cut everything out, get it stapled and glued properly, and then use it.

2) It didn’t really tap into their creativity. The way it was set up, they weren’t making pictures of the things they really appreciated about Rome. Instead, they were filling in descriptions of what other people thought was important for them to know.

Now, I am still learning this whole CM thing (and I’m sure someone can shed more light on this than I can), but I think CM thought it was important for us to get out of the way and let kids pull out the information they think is important and not have them focus on things we think are important. A difficult task for me! 🙂

So now my very creative dds, without any suggestions or assignments about it, trace pictures out of our books on Ancient Rome and color them. Then they tell me about the people or things in the pictures. Hopefully, we can get some page protectors and put them in three ring binders. 🙂

I don’t know if this helps or not, but I would encourage you to let your daughters express what they are learning through their own interpretations and efforts. Then…keep their art work safe and let them use it to narrate info to you. I think they will find it more rewarding than a prescripted tool.

God bless.

Jen

Christina,

I think lapbooking can be beneficial if it is used sparingly, based upon a subject the child has a great interest in, and is not too long in duration because that interest could be quenched by dragging something out too long.

We are more of a mind to collect things in notebooks. It may not be ‘notebooking’ per se, but it works for us. That gives us the ability to expand when we want to and, on the other hand, call something ‘complete’ at any time. They can also use all the creativity they want, or none at all beyond narrations.

With eight children, we’ve had too many failures that have resulted in incomplete projects which can furthur result in crushing that desire to learn.

Blessings,

Cindy

Christina,

Have you looked at notebookingpages.com? I have recently begun receiving her emails and I am reading through ‘how to get started.’ I’m thinking she may have some good ideas to add; though I am also wary of ‘fill in the blank’ pages.

Blessings,

Cindy

We, too, like to do “hobby notebooks,” which can easily lap over (no pun intended) to what the children are learning in school time. Here’s a little description of our experience with notebooks.