Easy Peasy! Our First Lapbook

Lapbooking, especially for littles, can be whatever you want to make it.

You can follow a unit study. You can make your own. Whichever option you choose, it can still be as easy as you like, or as complex.

We are a homeschool family, and we do use a very good curriculum for our core subjects (Reading/Phonics, Math, Spelling/Vocab, & Penmanship), and will later in the year use another lovely curriculum for some History and an awesome workbook on learning to read and draw maps.

We *do* love our curriculum. It's worked extremely well for us. This school year will be our second year using it, and I can't find a single reason to switch. Still, it is seatwork, and that can get a little boring, for Teacher & Student around here. I so want to maintain an atmosphere of fun in learning, and so I am always thinking and looking for ways to make learning very engaging for my daughter. I want her to love learning, all her life. Best way to nurture that, is to start doing so now :)

So what I decided to do this year is add lapbooking to our lessons. The bulk of them will likely be science, altho there will be others. Some literature based (we are working on Where The Wild Things Are, and will be doing a Mr. Popper's Penguins soon) and we are working on an addition one, because I can never seem to find the flash cards when I need them)  ;-) 

I have accumulated several lapbook unit studies from various sources; all of them are very good, and I will write about those as we do them. But another source that we will lapbook from is our mostly complete library of "Let's Read and Find Out" Science books. These are some amazing little books!

"Let's Read and Find Out" Science books are a series of books, on a plethora of science-y subjects. They come in Stage One and Stage Two (2 being the more advanced books) and are generally marketed toward K4-ish to 2nd graders. However, I've heard lots a great things from PreK teachers who use them for 3 year olds, and have read reviews of families whose 3rd-5th graders still love them. Engaging illustrations, coupled with the facts of a particular topic, teach young children at their level and keep them very engaged in the topic. Each book only deals with one topic, like a specific animal, or clouds, or volcanoes. Pretty neat stuff, at least we think so in our house :)

I did let my little chose her book for our very first lapbook. She chose "How Animal Babies Stay Safe". We kept the lapbook rather simple, and heavy on the graphics, because, you know, baby animals are just too stinkin' cute! ;-)