Homeschooling Tips: The Lapbook Project

I’m not the best example of a homeschooling parent, but forgive me if I gloat about this one thing. I’m just so proud of these lapbooks that we made. Lapbooking is awesome!

science lapbook

music lapbook

My 7-year old homeschooler and I thought of doing these because there is something about the Philippine textbooks that is so not conducive to studying. We have been trying and trying to learn the 3^rd Quarter Science lessons and we always come up with a blank at the end of a class. Nothing sticks! And science is supposed to be so interesting!

Following the example of homeschooling parents everywhere, we decided that what we needed was a lapbook project.  A lapbook, by the way, is a homemade educational tool crafted from file folders. One lapbook will concentrate on one subject topic or lesson. What we did was do a whole lapbook on the 3^rd quarter science lesson of “The Nonliving Part Of Our World.” We did 5 pages for this, one for each of the subtopics: matter, energy, light, force and motion, and sound. Then we did another lapbook for our music lesson.  Anything could go into it; drawings, cutouts, flashcards, notes. You could be as creative as you want. Then the finished product could be used for quizzing, and it would be like a game for both of you! No more dreary textbook lessons but more learning for your homeschooler!   

A peek inside our science lapbook: 

The "matter" page, and on the next page we learn about energy.

These are homemade envelopes from scratch bond paper,
and homemade flash cards from cutout cereal cartons

There are flaps that you could open to reveal more info. We used masking tape
 to stick the mini books onto the folders 

Matter can be described (with 5 senses) and measured (with instruments)

There are many problems with man's use of energy.
It all needed longer cards to write on and a bigger envelope
 to contain these cards

The "energy" page of our science lapbook. We folded cards out of bond paper,
made a drawing of each energy source and wrote some facts for each inside the cards

Next is the "light" page. Luminous and nonluminous objects
each take a place on the flaps. The space in the center is for light and shadow.
This particular folder page opens at the middle

A nonluminous object. A piece of masking tape was cut and folded
to form a pocket where these cutout cards could be placed.
This would make a good educational game
 where the home-schooled student can put the cards in their proper places.  

And here is our music lapbook:

We are learning about musical alphabets and musical signs

When you open the flap, you can place the alphabets in position in a musical bar.
In one flap we have the F-clef, on the other flap is the G- clef. We used Blu-Tack to stick them in.
That way, it would be easy to take off and stick on, again and again

The center page is for the so-fa hand signals 

There he is, the science guy and his little brother, at their work desk.
He loves his lapbook too. He actually was the one who colored in the
Earth with his watercolor. Isn't it just great?!

16 years and 3 sons after, and she finally thinks she can be a mom blogger. Kelly is an artist and writer who loves to stare at a blade of grass on her good days. On bad days, she drinks inordinate amounts of coffee and multitasks as her soul dreams of mountains unclimbed and her warm soft bed.