Why we love lapbooking!!

When we started history in first grade, we tried notebooking. We did a notebook page whenever Jessie did a narration. I usually wrote the narration. We cut and pasted it onto card stock and then decorated with a picture, map, coloring page, or whatever I could find online. While I still think this is a great way to organize narrations, Jessie just wasn't interested. I knew we were going to have to find something else.

About that time, the homeschool group I've been attending held a night of workshops for the monthly meeting. The best decision I ever made was to walk into the workshop on lapbooking. I loved the simplicity, the ability to pack a ton of information into a small space, the limitless possibilities of topics, and the variety of the booklets. Best of all, anyone can do this. (You don't have to be crafty).

Knowing that Jessie loves books, I felt fairly confident that she would love the idea of making tiny books. When we started studying Ancient Greece in first grade, we began our first and to date our best lapbook. Jessie loved the booklets, loves the lapbook, and still gets it out to look through it again. (I actually had to ask her where it was to take these pictures). Here are pictures of our first lapbook adventure.


This is the outside cover. Jessie picked her favorite images from the booklets, and I printed them off for her. She had a blast cutting them out and rearranging them. All of the images for this lapbook were found online using images.google.com.





The left flap contains booklets about the Greek myths that we made into a game. Each booklet was a plus sign. As we folded each section into the middle, we myths. The yellow booklets with the bows are a wrote a clue about the mythical person. When the booklet is completely open, the answer is revealed. We added the bows to hold them closed. In retrospect, matchbook booklets would have been perfect for this. For longer myths we made a separate booklet. The green and blue booklets cover the myths about Jason and the golden fleece and Perseus. The middle section contains 7 flip booklets about Aesop's fables.


This is the lapbook completely open. So the left flap from the previous picture opens out to the left while the middle flap opens up.









On the left side, the purple booklet it about the Iliad. It has 3 layered booklets in it: green for the Greek characters, blue for the Trojans, and yellow for the immortals. In the center is the basic plot: how the war began in pink, about Achilles in green, and how the war ended on the bottom flap. The yellow booklet is a one page book on the Odyssey, and the green one is a flip book on Homer. In red is the twelve labors of Hercules. This is a tall shutterfold booklet cut with 6 flaps on each side (one for each labor). Then we folded the booklet in half.

The next section has 2 booklets. In the flip book with the map is some information about the early inhabitants of Greece. In the blue trifold, some information about the first Olympics.











The green and light blue shutter booklets are about the city states of Sparta and Athens. In yellow is an upside down matchbook about the invasions of Persia under Darius in pink and Xerxes in blue. Hidden under that in light green is a pyramid booklet on Socrates. The purple trifold tells about the city state of Thebes.







Finally on the flip up extension are the final 2 booklets. In yellow is a trifold on Philip of Macedon. In purple is a slightly modified shutterfold with 6 flaps on top and bottom and 1 on the right which folds closed. The flaps tell the story of the life of Alexander the Great.

There's our first lapbook adventure. ( To be fair our subsequent lapbooks have been much simplier. This truly is our best so far.) Best of all we had a lot of fun along the way.