Lapbooks, Notebooks & Other Fun Stuff

While writing the post about our Lent plans I was persuing my daughter's Easter Vigil Notebook from last year, and I was readily appreciative of all the hard work she put into the project, not to mention the special little touches that make it truly her notebook with the inclusion of her unique art and narrations, she has "ownership" in her learning.  This is also the case with Matthias's current First Communion NB, he is making it uniquely his own and a true representation of how he is preparing for this very special sacrament.  This is something that gets me very excited about home educating my dear children.  It's also a sure way to boost my morale when looking at all we've worked on and learned together. I know that they are truly learning and enjoying their studies!  Besides, the notebooks and lapbooks are so fun for them to refer back to and give a presentation to grandparents and of course the "Principal".

I also described a little bit about how we use living books in my Carnival of Children's Literature post.  Some of our unit studies lend naturally to notebooking and lapbooking and at other times we just add our discoveries and learning adventures in their appropriate separate notebooks.  (I'll list out what we have going at the end of this post.)

If you frequent the 4real forum, you know about all the great ideas one can glean, and I have used so many of the ideas there I feel a bit like a thief in the night at times, but I know they are there for the sharing, it's such a wonderful group of individuals.  Many of the lesson plans we've used to compile our studies have come from the Rabbit Trails Forum, go ahead and browse through if you like unit studies! 

I thought it appropriate to load some of our recent lapbooks and (in the future) notebooks for specific studies we've done.  You'll see them listed in the right side-bar under "Photo Albums", click on each link and check them out.  I am a lapbook amatuer, so be gentle in your analysis, I'd love any feedback or other ideas you may have to share about how you lapbook/notebook. 

There are also some great examples at Lapaz Farm, they sure make a unit on Pirates look fun!

Please also visit the 4real A Living Faith forum to view beautiful pictures of a First Communion Notebook, click on page 2. (HT: Elizabeth Foss)

Cay Gibson has given a nice list of things to include in a Liturgical Year NB also at 4real., scroll down about 2/3rds of the way, there is tons of info here and much of it by the infamous "jenngm67", thanks!

I’ve highlighted this before: at Home School Share, there are skads of literature-based studies that all lend to some form of lapbooking/notebooking. 

Now, as a caveat, unit studies are not all we do as I am pretty CM pure, but for us, one of the fun parts of our discoveries is in the documentation and since I happen to be a closet scrapbooker, the lapbook/notebook thing comes naturally as a form of carrying out the storage of all the great stuff we're learning.

Oh, and if I had the where-with-all to follow my dear children around the house with a video camera I could record all their learning which is continually acted out in their play.  Case in point, we've been re-living our vacation through the eyes of all their beanie babies, playmobil, rokenbok, "little people", Thomas and friends, and AG dolls since we returned home!  I LOVE it!  However, that would qualify me as the "super-hero-home-school-mom-of-the-year" status, of which I have not yet reached.  We just like to be creative and have fun, so this is some of what works for us. (Book Note:  Elizabeth Foss talks about recording her dear children’s narrations on video in her lovely book Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home)

History is very fun to document and I love Home School in the Woods timeline stickers for our Book of Centuries and adding to appropriate lapbooks/notebooks.

Please visit Simply CM for a very simple way to set up a BOC, this is a great new CM site!

In addition to our Easter Vigil Notebook and the two lapbooks I have featured, we keep Nature Notebooks/Journals, Science NB's, Religion NB's,  First Communion NB (this year for Matthias), Math NB's, Language Arts NB's, Book of Centuries, Poetry NB's, Saints NB's, Geography NB's, Latin NB (Violet's), and they each have their own Book of Stories NB's.  Seamus has his very own Pre-school NB, he's very proud of it and we are too! (We also did a beautiful Japan NB last year at this time that I will upload, it was a wonderful study, check back soon). 

Now granted these are not added to every day (with the exception of our Nature journals, they are the fattest by far!) but over the course of time, naturally, and if we're doing something specific like our Artic Unit right now, we're going to lapbook it! 

So there you have it, a little of What We Do!!

Just a few more sites to browse through for "notebooking/lapbooking" needs:

Hold That Thought and Notebooking, and I imagine if you have lots of time on your hands <g> you could peruse the archives at the Five In A Row site for many ideas on organizing literature-based learning!  Have Fun!

Comments

[MAUREEN]

What a wonderfully thorough post! I just posted about our Book of Centuries project today. Your beautiful lapbooks make our BOC look like child's play. OOHH! That's right! It IS child's play!

[Happyheartsmom]

Maureen, thanks for your kind words, they have been a lot of fun and I really wanted to give everyone an idea of what's possible in hopefully a simple way. Thanks again, and I'm going to look at your blog now!!

[Mary Ellen Barrett]

Thanks for the great post. Your children do wonderful work and, like a thief in the night, I will probably snitch a few of your wonderful ideas.

[Happyheartsmom]

Please do Mary Ellen!! Let me know if any of the explanations are unclear, or if you're at all like me, a picture says it all and I just go for it!! Thanks for looking!

[Theresa]

You did a great job pulling together so many resources. Thanks for that and for mentioning me! Your children's lapbooks are beautiful!

[Happyheartsmom]

You are welcome Theresa, I love checking out your blog and all the fun you're having! Thanks for your kind words, the kids did all the hard work!

[Peakmore Academy]

I don't recall if I'd been at your site before but if not, glad I found it! I really enjoyed viewing and reading about your notebooks!

From one notebooking family to another-- have a great weekend!

[tristan]

My daughter who is 14 is finially receiving her Sacrements of Baptism and First holy communion in two weeks at Easter vigil.She has completed all the classes and is totally ready.she has her note book all ready and it beautiful.Her communion banner is all done as well.She is wearing two separate outfits for her baptism and first communion so it will be a challenge to get her changed at the proper times.For her baptism,she is wearing the traditional white,poofy,top of the knees baptism dress with the matching bonnet,lace anklets and the white,satin,'mary jane'shoes.she told me she wants her baptism diaper to be cloth with white rubber pants over it,so i made her the cloth diaper and got her adult size rubber pants.she is wearing a tee shirt with them.after her baptism,she will change into her communion dress and veil and will put white tights on over the diaper and rubber pants and then the mary janes again.I am so looking forward to having her in the white outfits and am going to take plenty of pictures of her.