My children has thoroughly enjoyed making some lapbooks before and so I decided to let you all in on this well-kept secret for a fun project that also makes for wonderful souvenirs, great learning records and something beautiful to show to skeptical family, friends & neighbors. It can also serve as a great tool for review of a topic. If you adjust it a little bit, it would be known as notebooking, but it is very similar.
A lapbook is a book/file folder that is made by the child (with the help of their parent/teacher). It can fit in your lap, chock-ful of facts about a particular topic. It contains a lot of foldables and those can be custom-made by the parent or it can be downloaded online. There are some free lapbooks online as well as some that can be purchased.
There are many resources online to help you learn to make lapbooks. Here are just a few:
How to lapbook:
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ and then click on lapbooking
http://www.lapbooklessons.com/ (a Christian lapbook site)
The following awesome site has free lapbooks ALL across the curriculum! You can also share yours with the site. They have lapbook templates as well that can help you create your own lapbook. This site has notebooking pages as well.
http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks.htm
There are also some commercial lapbooking companies. Here are some to get you started:
Hands of a Child has lots of lapbooks for any subject and a freebie twice a year.
Click here to obtain the Hands of a Child Freebie!
At Knowledge Box Central you can get some lapbooks 50% off if you are a member of homeschoolbuyers co-op. This company also gives out a $10 coupon code if you sign up for their email newsletter.
is another lapbooking company. Click on freebies section for info on how to get freebies.
Currclick sells e-books. They sell all the commercial lapbooking items. This is a particularly good site to bookmark and check weekly (or sign up for their weekly emails) because they have a free e-book each week and many times it is a lapbooking unit!
I trust this will be enough to get you started having a great time of making lapbooks with your children.