Homeschooling for 3

Lapbooking is a fun way to teach and teach and reinforce every subject. It’s also something that all members of the family can do regardless of age. Basically a lapbook is a collection of minibooks and/or facts about a subject. These minibooks are placed inside of ordinary file folders that refolded to create a master book that fits in your lap.

A Journey Through Learning makes lapbooking super easy for a beginner like me to get started. I have been familiar with lapbooks for awhile, but this is my first time actually assembling one. Doing the lapbook project on “Autumn” has been a real eye-opener for me in more ways than one:

1. Lapbooking is not complicated. I think this was one of the biggest points for me. I shied away from the activity because I couldn’t imagine how to choose what to include in a lapbook or how to put it together.
2. Children learn and remember facts easily. Since there is a three year gap between my ladies so I wasn’t sure if Alaya would get as much out of it as Jade does. The minibooks break each subject down so well that there are few questions from either child.
3. The organizational benefits. Jade had to deal with an immature auditory system and went to speech for a number of years. I mistakenly thought that once speech was over that was the end of her difficulties. But doing lapbooking has shown me that another quirk of her speech issue has manifested in her organizational skills. While her little sister had no problem organizing her book, Jade was all over the place. So I’m now incorporating lapbooking in every subject possible because she needs to strengthen those skills.

A Journey Through Learning really makes it easy for parents to teach and reinforce lessons in one step. Most of their lapbooks come with unit study guides. This means that there is a lesson before each crafting activity. So, you read the facts and/or story about the subject and then do the crafts. I’ve found that this has helped the children to remember the facts a lot better than through the traditional “read and regurgitate” method.

In addition to the minibooks being created, the A Journey Through Learning has a variety of fun activities as well.  For example, one of the activities in the Autumn lapbook was to pretend that we were birds and using a scavenger list we had to find the materials for making a bird’s nest.  This led to many discussions, lots of memorable fun.

Their catalog contains lapbooks on all kinds of topics including science, history, biblical, literature and also preschool topics.  If you’re lucky enough to live in Louisiana you can even take a lapbooking class with the owners. Their lapbook prices are very reasonable, especially when you consider that you can reprint whatever you need for all of the children in your family. The ebooks are $13, the CD version is $14 and the printed version is $21 per book.

Each book is chock full of stories, templates, charts, minibooks and activities. Many of the books are over 50 pages of information. And the activities are appropriate for a range of ages starting at the preschool level to the seventh grade.  I’m finding this to be one of the greatest appeal of their products because I can work with everyone at the same time. Since I also do work at home, the more subjects that I can combine without compromising either child’s level is really important.

But don’t take my word for it.  You need to head on over to A Journey Through Learning and get your free lapbook to try out. Once you signup for their free newsletter you’ll receive “An Overview of the 17th Century.” I think that once you experience the ease and fun of working with their products you’ll be hooked too!

 

Technorati Tags: a journey through learning, art, history, lap books, lapbooking, literature, science, study guide, unit studies