Archive for the ‘Lapbooks’ Category
Homeschool Bits 10 cent Lapbook Sale
I was going to label this post Spring Madness because we have been SO busy! I don’t want to bore you so if interested you can read all about it on our family blog! Needless to say, schooling this last week has been pretty non-existent and I have not had much time at my computer. I have been receiving emails about this sale over on CurrClick for quite a while but just deleting it as I really did not have the time to investigate. When I received it again today I thought it was time to check it out.
Homeshool Bits lapbooks are basic and quick, not in depth like some of the others out there BUT there is also a HUGE price difference. I have purchased several from them in the past and been very pleased with them. They teach what needs to be taught without the frills! At normal prices they are a great deal but at only 10c a lapbook right now they are an absolute bargain! That means you can get 10 lapbooks for a dollar! Wow! I have stocked up and now have the task this evening of downloading over 150 items and saving them in the right categories 🙂
That brings me to another subject – saving your worksheets, lapbooks etc. I am a naturally organized person and it makes me mad/frustrated if I cannot find something. SO I have created a Homeschool folder and under that are all the different subjects in sub-folders. Under each sub-folder, take for example Geography, there will then be more sub-folders for ‘Continents’, ‘Countries’ etc. It keeps going 🙂 Under ‘Countries’ for example, I have a sub-folder for each country that I have info on thus far. Being organized like this means that when I want to study a certain country I do not have to troll through endless titles of all the other countries. I just head to the country that I am looking for and there is everything I need. I hope this little titbit of info helps you in your homeschooling.
Liz
P.S. They are saying the sale will end at midnight April 13th so don’t hesitate to go investigate!
The Wheels on the Bus Lapbook
What young child does not like the song “The Wheels on the Bus?” Now you can encourage learning by helping them with this lapbook. Suitable for kids PreK to K.
This lapbook requires two file folders, glued together plus colored paper and a printer to print out the projects.
You can purchase it for $6 from In the Hands of a Child at the date of publishing this (Feb 15th, 2014). It comes complete with a 7 day lesson plan. I like to complete most lapbook in a week (5 days) so I adjusted ours to fit into that schedule. Caleb really enjoyed this.
Happy learning,
Liz
FREE Ask Mr. Bear Lapbook for Preschoolers
The story of Ask Mr. Bear is a classic by Marjorie Flack. Danny is searching for the perfect present for his mother. First he sees Mrs. Hen who offers him a nice fresh egg but Danny’s mother already has an egg so together they skip along until they meet Goose. She offers Danny feathers for a pillow but Danny’s mother already has a pillow. The story goes on as they meet various animals (goat – cheese, sheep – wool, cow – cream) but none of them can offer Danny anything that his mother does not already have so Cow tells him to go see Mr. Bear over the hill. All the animals are too scared to go with him so he has to go alone. Mr. Bear suggests giving her a bear hug 🙂
Homeschool Share has a really good FREE Ask Mr. Bear Lapbook which Caleb recently completed.
I added to this Lapbook extra G Printables from Homeschool Share and it still all fitted in one file folder.
Not liking to teach without knowing what I am doing I created a 4 day lesson plan which is FREE to download.
Hope you enjoy this as much as we did 🙂
Another adVENTURE of FREE, fun learning 
Liz
Who Likes Curious George?
It seems like we cannot come home from the library without at least one Curious George book! If you have never read one of these books to your children or grandchildren then let me share a little bit about him.
Curious George was brought from Africa by the Man with the Yellow Hat! George, being a monkey, cannot seem to stay out of mischief no matter where he is – hospital, camping, pancake breakfast, library etc. George never means to cause a problem & in fact is always wanting to help but sometimes his “helping’ isn’t what humans think he should be doing. The stories always end on a happy note though & our kids just love them.
As I was preparing a study on Curious George for Caleb recently I learned from this study that the Houghton Mifflin Company had a dedicated page of FREE George printables. You just click on the one you want & it automatically downloads via PDF file which you can them save & print as many times as you like. Of course you do need to have Adobe Acrobat on your computer to download them.
For FREE Unit Studies on Curious George you can get them at the Homeschool Share Website:
- Curious George (Just finished this one with Caleb & he loved it! Pictures shown are from this.)
- Curious George Gets a Job
Caleb learned about where Africa is, birds, traffic lights, farm vs zoo animals, wide variety of different boats, Alexander Bell the inventor of the telephone, firefighters, water safety etc. Will he remember it all? Of course not but he now has a reference to look back to. For example when we study boats again in the future we will be able to pull the boat pics out from this unit that are all laminated & revisit them.
Another adVENTURE of FREE, fun learning
Liz
Jesse Bear Lapbook for Preschoolers
The first Lapbook Caleb completed was written for the book Jesse Bear by Nancy Carlstrom. Caleb absolutely loved doing it & still takes it out most days to play with. The book is about a bear named Jesse who gets up & goes out to play, comes in at noon for his lunch, is excited when his daddy comes home & then enjoys his bath & being snuggled up in his bed at night.
The Lapbook is available FREE on HomeschoolShare.com & the book should be available at your local library. We actually ended up purchasing the book as it is definitely a keeper.
I did a lot of preparation beforehand so that we were not wasting Caleb’s precious concentration time on cutting out etc. I laminated both the rhyming words & the lunch plate and food items.
Knowing that the small food items would soon get lost around here I added velcro dots to the back of each piece along with the opposite velcro pieces on the dinner plate. This activity was placed on the back of the folder.
Our favorite component has been the Alphabet Laundry matching game. This has helped Caleb in his letter recognition immensely. The aim is to match up Capital/Upper Case Letters to their Small/Lower Case counterparts. There are socks to be paired up & also some shorts & t-shirts. There is a mistake in one of the letters (I needed to redo the small “t” and “q.”) If you would like my PDF file for the correction please email me. There are too many of these to fit into the Lapbook so we just keep them in a big envelope inside the Lapbook. It goes without saying that I laminated all the “laundry” & it is just as well I did, as Caleb has played & played with them. (Picture below shows only a sample, not all the letters.)
I highly recommend this Lapbook for little ones.
Another adVENTURE of FREE, fun learning
Liz
Our First Lapbook – Spiders
For the past couple weeks I have been researching curriculum for the coming school year. We do not use one brand of curriculum for all subjects. I know it works for some people but it never has for us plus I, for one, like variety. I have several favorite resources that I like to reference, none of which I would be happy to use exclusively. SO saying all that my head has been pretty buzzing with a load of info recently. Then early this week I made it buzz even more when I discovered Lapbooking for the first time!
Apparently Lapbooking has been a part of homeschooling for quite some time but I had never heard of it until now. Boy, did it capture my attention & enthusiasm & I was eager to try one to see how Daniel & Hannah would like it. If you are anything like me you are asking the question “What in the world is Lapbooking?”
Lapbooking is a system of immersing a child in a certain subject, bringing out their creative talents & storing it in a way that doesn’t take up much space & can be kept for future reference. Don’t knwo about your house, but here much of the kids work ends up in the trash as the individual pages end up on the floor or being cut out by someone else feeling crafty with the scissors! Some does go on the refrigerator for a while but that can only hold so much. In my opinion Lapbooking solves a big problem.
Disclaimer: Although I am excited about this new form of teaching I do believe there needs to be balance & will not be using Lapbooks all the time!
To create a Lapbook you take a simple File Folder, open it up & fold each side into the middle. More complicated ones for longer studies can be created with 2,3 or even 4 folders. I did not have any File Folders on hand this morning (got them on order) so used Pocket Folders, cutting out the pocket. Hence ours in the pictures shown below are not as colorful as most file folders are not white inside but normally a lighter color of whatever color the outside is. FYI I have just ordered a pack of multi-colored file folders from Amazon at a very reasonable price. At just under 16c each I didn’t think that was a bad price plus I wanted a variety of colors so as to let the children have a choice 🙂
SO stepping back in time for just a few, my initial dilemma was what subject to choose? I wanted something that was relevant to what we were doing & also needed to ensure we had the books on the subjects on hand. At one point I got so overwhelmed & frustrated that I just had to shut down all the research windows I had up & say to myself, “Calm down! Get organized & plan for the future, not right this minute!” Patience has never been one of my strengths! If I decide to do something I want to do it NOW! LOL!
Last night as I went to bed, the inspiration hit! Spiders! We have two more insects to cover for science this year from the book History of Insects & spiders is one of them. (Silkworms are the other.) The spider books from the library have been sat here for a few weeks waiting. SO right after breakfast this morning I googled “Spider Lapbook” & up came several options. Wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for on CurrClick, a website I had seen earlier but not fully investigated. Not sure how long they have it at a special price but right now, at time of writing, it is only $1! That’s a steal! If you are interested in maybe studying spiders at a later date, just buy it, download it & save it. ( I will be returning to their website later to see what other “steals” may come in handy later.) With research some are free & I will share some of those with you as we do them. I like to test out a product before recommending it to others.
This Spider Lapbook was designed to do over 1-2 days which was perfect for us. Some are designed for a week, others 2-4 weeks & we will definitely incorporate some of those later. For today though this was absolutely perfect as it introduced us all to a new product in a very gentle way.
With our File Folders folded & our Lapbook units printed off, it was time to begin. Everything was explained well, we read 3 Spider books & then the kids started on the work. They really enjoyed it.
This Spider Lapbook had 6 major parts/sections:
- What family?
- Labeling the Parts
- Webs (what we had discovered about them.)
- Life Cycle (wheel)
- Enemies (required to draw an enemy that eats spiders)
- Nursery Rhymes Book (Two Nursery Rhymes were included & they had to write out another. We chose Incy Wincy Spider.)
Each part was a different shape creating variety. Â For younger children you may want to precut out all the templates/activities but for children with good scissor skills I would encourage you to let them do it themselves. It teaches them to do a good job & take pride in their work.
This whole Lapbook took less than 2 hours to complete. The company states it is for all ages but I think that is a little broad. I would say all Elementary aged children. Of course the older the child, the more neat the work should be & the more detailed.
The only other supplies required were some brads, glue & a stapler. The children have now created a keepsake that they can show to others & that did not cost a lot of money to put together.
The cover above is just glued on one side 🙂 All the pictures shown are from Daniel’s Lapbook.
As for which Spider books to read, there are SO many good ones out there to choose from that is why I have not shared specific ones with you. You may already have Spider books on your bookshelf but if not, your local library is guaranteed to have at least one. Ours had a myriad to choose from.
Take care,
Liz
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