How do you do lapbooks with two kids?

[Faithr]

I've never done lapbooks before. They intimidate the heck out of me. However, my 8 yo likes the idea and my 11 yo seems willing to go along. I wanted to do a unit study on the American West, a subject that I never got to with my older three (hanging head in shame!). Do have the kids make the exact same lapbook each? I don't think my 11 yo will like that. . . he'll think he's being lumped in too much with his baby sister. Do you let them choose which topics they want to include in the lapbook as long as the topic gets addressed by somebody? Or can you have person work on the lapbook and the other work on something else while still covering the same topics?

 

I'm using the Time Traveler's kit on Early 19c America from Home School in the Woods, btw.

 

Any words of wisdom for lapbooking novice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!

[Closeacademy]

I've done both. Sometimes they work on their own versions of the same lapbook but most of the time they work on different ones.

 

With my older child, I give her a piece of the lapbook and the guide and have her do all the writing. Although I do the cutting and folding. She does lay out her lapbooks as well.

 

With my younger child, I do all the work and just go over things with her.

 

Most of the time, I let my children pick out what they want to do a lapbook on and make it an enrichment subject but once in a while we will do a companion lapbook to whatever we are studying.:001_smile:

[corbie]

I have actually had three of my girls work on one lapbook. We do make pretty packed lapbooks, though. I might have my younger work on copy work related to the topic, my older doing research, my youngest do coloring. It all works out and they are all proud of doing something together. I just look at what needs to be done, what can be learned and break it down. There's tons of coloring and cutting that youngers can do.

 

Homeschoolshare.com and homeschoolhelper.com have lots of lapbook templates. We are doing homeschool in the woods lapbooks right now. Those turn out beautiful, but I have to say h.helper & h.share provided more learning opportunities by making the girls research the answers instead of hs in the woods, where the answers are already printed.

 

Anyway, we don't do a ton of lapbooks, maybe 2-3 a year. They are fun to look back on. Don't stress out over them. You can make them as simple or as complicated as you want.

[MelanieM]

The latest one we did (on elephants) each kid had their own copies of the pieces, but the amount of work they did was based on their skill level. For example, my daughter did her own handwriting but I wrote things out for my son. I think it's like combining kids for any learning opportunity; just go as deep as is suitable for the level of the child. Working on their levels will give you lots of natural variety.

 

Have fun!

[kfeusse]

I have 3 kids and we have just started lapbooking. At first I thought I would have each one do the same lapbook whenever we would do one...but I just couldn't figure out what would be the purpose of having 3 of everyone we did. So, I decided if we were doing a lapbook along side of a school topic, we would do one lapbook and each child would do part of it. But we have also done lapbooks on topics each child was interested in, they could do a lapbook on that topic...but at any rate, we will only have one lapbook per topic. Much more managable.