An educational method that involves (usually younger) homeschoolers making "mini-books" about what they are learning. It provides space for drawings, writings, timelines, pictures, graphs, or stories on any topic of current study, and is designed to fit on a child's lap.Over the past year, I had been looking for more unique, creative & fun ways to homeschool my littles. I read blogs, peeked on Pinterest, visited many curriculum sites & consulted with other homeschooling Mommas. Lapbooking is the one that I thought & prayed about continually. It wasn't too expensive. The kids could regularly use scissors, markers, paint, glue, hole punches & more. So it was decided.
As I started bookmarking sites & pinning ideas, I kept running across common books, like Madeline, The Story of Ping & more. It triggered something a fellow homeschooling mom had told me about, FIAR. FIAR is a curriculum, or rather unit plans for 70 books over 4 volumes! That really appealed to me. I'm not a huge fan of lesson planning. So, having suggested activities & discussion points for books . . . it was just what I was looking for! I have more to say about lesson planning & prepping for lapbooking, but I'll save that for another day.
Here are La & AMP's Madeline Lapbooks:
I have the kids print/sign their names to the covers & date them. I have a basket in the living room where they will place their completed lapbooks. The love showing their work to guests & grandparents. After this school year, or when my basket starts overflowing, I'll relocate the lapbooks to my filing system.
La begs & pleads to do school - every day! Even after I've been up all night with a croupy twin or have 20 lbs. of tomatoes to process, she's at my feet begging to do school. This year she is so proud to be working right along side her big brother & I love having her there! She is so much fun to teach . . . unless she's having a "like Momma" day. She can be stubborn . . . like me, and only want to do things on her own terms. Definitely something to improve upon over her years at the Academy for the Absent Minded & Seriously Silly.
La does everything AMP does in our lapbooks, but often in a slightly different way. For example, I write titles, verses, lists & passages out & she traces them. In math for Madeline, we talked about symmetry. She could grasp it enough to classify pictures into symmetrical & asymmetrical piles. But she struggled with completing shapes to make them symmetrical.
AMP, on the other hand, grasped the concept of symmetrical & quickly completed the other sides. He then went a step further & turned his symmetry cards into common objects. The upper left to right: a package that arrived in the mail, a face, the Red Cross logo. Lower left to right: pizza, a heart --> AMP ♥ MOM, and last but not least, an oyster cracker. I love his creativity.
I am in awe of how proud La is of her work!
In addition to our symmetry discussions, we had handwriting using a passage from Madeline, we rhymed, looked at the major organs in the body so we could learn what an appendix is, discussed the importance of & proper hand washing and ordering from largest to smallest (and the smallest one was Madeline).
AMP loves to cut. We used to have a box of scrap paper that I would let the older two cut. That turned into a confetti mess at least twice a week. Much to their disappointment, I put it all away after Christmas.
Scissor Ninja, AMP. He often will say, "Thanks for not having us do workbooks all the time." ♥
We spent 2 afternoons exploring France. We read a few books from the library about France & found a video to watch. We all loved it!! Afterwards, we made a flap book about where France is, another with the flag of France & a third book containing facts about France. The little Tour of France book with the bow was fun! It includes real printed photos of famous places in France that can be seen in the illustrations in Madeline -- such as Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower,
AMP is pointing to his favorite part - the maze. He loves mazes so much that the tooth fairy brought him a book of mazes instead of money.
There is a line in Madeline, "They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad." So I brought in some scripture - Philipians 4:8-9. We discussed it - specifically identifying good things to think about. And that when something goes wrong, we should find the good & be thankful for it. We also read Colossians 3:12 & 1 Peter 3:10.
If you're interested in making a Madeline book like ours, you can find 100% of these mini-books & such at HomeschoolShare in FIAR Resources Volume One. Here if you have problems locating it.
Bibliography:
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmanns
France by Rachel Grack
Eiffel Tower by AV^2 - Virtual Field Trip
The Human Body by Sonja Black (not available on Amazon - our library had it)
Nature Math by Penny Dowdy
Patterns Outside by Daniel Nunn
Video: France - Countries Around the World (not available on Amazon - found at our library. Amazon does have the Activity Packet for the video series.)
* rowing - to study by reading a book each day for 5 days via FIAR & other fun learning activities that you can create!
Some credit on the photos go directly to AMP & La.
Some credit on the photos go directly to AMP & La.
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