Do you and your children enjoy lapbooks?

[Soror]

I have a friend that is over the moon about them. Ever time she teaches groups for ECs she wants to do a lapbook b/c "they are so fun for the kids." I can't wrap my brain around them being "fun." Maybe more fun than traditional worksheets... maybe... but it seems to me a very inefficient way of learning.

Edited February 11, 2019 by soror

[HomeAgain]

I like them as a collaborative effort or as a long term, bite sized project.  When you have a group creating a class presentation, they're great!  Each student can work to their strengths.  I like them the way we're doing one right now - about once a week, adding a small project to a blank book to create an -ology type record of learning.  It's not FOR learning, it's a nice record to come back to and use as review.

[alisoncooks]

I like them for organizing data, but it takes a certain kind of kid. My kids HATE coloring, cutting, and pasting -- so lapbooks are a flop here. I, otoh, loved those things as a child, so I probably would have loved lapbooks (as opposed to worksheets or reports or something).

[historically accurate]

I have a writing-phobic kid; I think she likes lapbooks because the little books are less threatening than a large blank piece of paper. She's not a fan of coloring, so I just print the books on colored cardstock. 

In fact, this kid likes lapbooks so much, I am thinking of making that our history and science next year for 7th grade. Pick a topic and study it for a month or so; make a lapbook and move on. Kind of a unit study thing.

Edit: My older 2 were "take lapbooks or leave them" type. They'd do them sometimes if I had one on a related topic. The older preferred a more straight-forward style. The middle preferred sharing her knowledge with many different ways - puppet shows, reports, worksheets, etc.

Edited February 11, 2019 by beckyjo

[2_girls_mommy]

I have one with dyslexia that does better with notebook in general- small spaces/ squares to fill in look more three dimensional to her tgan a flat white sheet of paper, which works better for her. Art and colors also are very helpful. 

So lapbooks would have been good for her. We didn't do them a lot. We instead did little fun ones for breaks in our regular learning. I remember a St. Patrick's day one one year and a groundhog day one once, just little units for breaks from our day in and day out curriculum. But notebooking in general is kind of the same thing, just not folded into tge folder, and that we've always done. We just cut and drew and glued into composition books most of the time or spent money on Apologia Jr. Notebooks or  Thinking Tree journals that can go with any curriculum. So it's kind of the same thing, just less polished. 

[Emba]

They always seemed to me aS if they ought to be fun, and I kept trying them with DD, especially in history, and she had fun with some of it, more fun than worksheets or witing, but they were definitely not the most fun, and they never seemed to actually help her learn of retain info, so I quit doing them.

[Garga]

I forced my son to do one for state history to check off a state law requirement.  It was either the lapbook for 2 weeks or me drumming up other ideas for state history on my own or getting a curric with worksheets and readings that would take much longer than 2 weeks.  

Oh, how he hated it.  Oh, how I hated it!  The compromise we made was that he would read the book and cut out the pictures, and I’d add a bit of color to them and glue them down.  The two of us aren’t artsy-crafty and so we both hated fussing with the little cutouts.  

But he actually did remember what he learned and we got it done in the first couple of weeks of school and I didn’t have to drum up something else for “state history” and we didn’t have to devote time over a few months to a meatier curriculum.    

That was the one and only we did.  If I had a different kid who liked design and crafts, I think it would have been great.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Garga

[dsbrack]

I tried them with my oldest and it was an epic failure.  That turned me off for many years but I'm breaking one out again to try with my second son.  He loves cutting, pasting, and all that jazz so I think it might be a good fit. We shall see.  

[Miss Tick]

I said rarely. We did the ones aligned with SotW 1 and 2 and those were good for review. Other than that, rarely. I don't really want to put one together myself (perfectionism) but then I quibble with ones that other people supply.

[Guest]

I have a kid who's fine motor skills ran behind her academic skills, so Lapbooks, history pockets, etc were a way to work on the coloring, cutting, gluing, etc when she was beyond the level that such activities were terribly common. 

[Lori D.]

DSs here were never into cutting, coloring, and crafts, so we only did one: it was to go along with the Beautiful Feet Geography pack, in the way HomeAgain described above -- as a way of reviewing info from the year-long study. The guide has wonderful writing assignment ideas, and similar to Beckyjo above, with 2 writing-phobic DSs, it made doing some writing very painless, when they only had to write a few sentences to "fill a booklet", lol.

Last year, I put together a 4-class series for 3rd & 4th graders on a topic for a friend who's a teacher at a small charter school, and I had fun creating a lap book for each class topic. Most of the kids were very used to doing cutting/coloring/short writing kinds of "output" for school, so they seemed to have fun putting it all together as a final lap book to be able to take home and "teach" their parents what they had learned.

Edited February 12, 2019 by Lori D.

[Clemsondana]

My kids have each taken a class at co-op that was planned around lapbooks.  I'm the world's least crafty person, so it's not something I'd do at home.  My daughter enjoyed it, and it made a really neat thing to take home at the end of the year.  They added a page every week or 2.  Daughter loves crafty, hands-on style projects, so even though we don't do lapbooking at home, I've added other projects to make school more enjoyable and functional for her.  My son took a class where the teacher had planned to do lapbooks.  The did something the first day, and then the kids asked if they could do something different.  I think they wound up with a boy-heavy class that didn't enjoy the crafty.  The teacher was fine with it - they did some sort of activity relating to the topic each week and everybody was happy.  

[JaLeSherman]

I said yes but it is a very measured yes.

We've only done a couple of lapbooks. One was for addition facts to help them stick. She liked having a tab say 2+7 and then 'quizzing' herself. The other ones have been for Science only so far. It's been great in helping her review simple terms and definitions. (Like a skull protects the brain, nothing too egregious, she's only 6) But as far to the extent I've seen some people do them? No. Once we finish our human body study and lapbook, I plan on having her use it to start building very basic public speaking skills, with pictures and a simple sentence here and there to keep her on track. Nothing serious or graded. Just exposure.

I like it, but I couldn't see doing more than two or three per year. But that's just us. 

[Melissa in Australia]

I have only done a dozen or so with the twins. they like doing them.  The main benefit I see is a lapbook is visually pleasing for a child to constantly look though. so they are revising their learning often. Whereas something filed away in a folder or workbook is seldom seen again.

 We should do some more - 

[RenaInTexas]

We did one and will not do another - ever.

A lot of work for very little reward. After it was done, my kids asked; 'Couldn't we have just read all of this stuff somewhere?'

I think if they were less than 7, the visual appeal would have delighted them, but at 9 they were over it. But mine are boys who don't enjoy crafts.

[wendyroo]

We've done a few lapbooks - in general, my kids consider making a lapbook to be better than writing a paragraph or doing chores, but worse than listening to a read aloud or free drawing.  So, I don't know, does that mean they enjoy them?  Somewhat.

At my home, I find lapbooks can be a good teaching tool, if I am very clear about my goals.  My #1 goal with a lapbook is to promote communication, leadership and cooperation.  I appoint one of my two oldest as the foreman of the project.  That child needs to practice clear, fair leadership, while the others practice contributing ideas and cooperatively following a leader's directions.  My #2 goal is information organization.  If they read about icebergs, I want them to practice dividing the information into subcategories and deciding which type of booklet might be suited to each subcategory.  My #3 goal is learning actual content.  They do learn things, and obviously that is good, but that is not why I have them make lapbooks.  I'm actually not sure if reading and then making a lapbook helps them learn more about the topic than just reading would have.  I am convinced that making the lapbook (on their own, not from a pre-planned template) forces them to interact with the information more fully, and think about categorizing it, comparing it, sequencing it, etc.

Actually, why I have them make lapbooks is normally that I need my three older children (5, 7 and 9 years old) to be productively engaged in a prolonged activity that does not require my constant, active involvement.  I give them a couple books or articles on a topic, I give them a file folder and a bunch of different mini-books pre-cut and stapled, I give them the bins of colored pens and pencils and some glue, and I let them get to it.  I stay out of it completely and I car emuch more about the process than the product.  I do give them a rubric and a reward to strive for.  Normally the rubric includes things like: at least 6 mini-books about the topic, at least one illustration that each of them drew, legible handwriting, a title on the front, a list of source texts on the back, etc.  If they spend 2ish productive hours and fulfill the rubric (and give me a chance to deep-clean the pantry which was my goal), then I will happily take us all out for ice cream afterwards.

Wendy

[Miss Tick]

I agree with @Melissa in Australia that the lapbook is more visually pleasing. When grandma visited they brought out lapbooks to chat with her about, but no work folders, etc. 

Also, I should confess that in the interest of speed and minimal frustration i cut out all the parts so we could focus on adding information (review) and then assembly. We did the history lapbooks every third chapter. That was nice for review and matched the extent of their sustained interest length.

Edited March 6, 2019 by SusanC
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