those of you who do lapbooking or other fun activities in your day,

[HappyGrace]

how do you plan it ahead of time? Do you tie these things in with your studies, or just pick a random lapbook or activity to do and do it? I'm rethinking our school day and trying to add more activities, etc., and I have NO clue how to do this!

[Midwest Momma]

I just printed everything, and ds (9) picks a booklet to do 3 days a week. He picked the topic (I gave him all the choices). This fits in his science slot. I suppose for a younger student, you might need to give a lot more direction and less choices.

[Sue G in PA]

right now we are doing a Human Body lapbook for Science. We do a few mini books with each lesson/day. I'm also giving my ds6 an academic break and doing a dinosaur lapbook w/ him. I'm also planning one for my ds5 and dd2...Very Hungry Caterpillar. Dd2 LOVES this book. Lapbooks can be fun for crafty kids...not so much for non-crafty kids like my ds9. He tolerates them.

[prairiegirl]

For right now, I am just letting them pick what they would like to do for lapbooks. We do the lapbook things in the afternoon. My youngest is doing a lapbook on the book, Jessie Bear. My ds is doing a unit study on pirates which includes a lapbook. We got this from Homeschool Share (http://www.homeschoolshare.com) This site has oodles of ideas. My oldest is doing a lapbook on Mary Cassatt. This is free this week from the Homeschool E-Store (http://www.homeschoolestore.com) I get alot of my ideas from there as well.


Julia
mom of 3 (8,7,5)

[Kristen in NC]

We're making lapbooks for physics. We're using God's Design for the Physical World (http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Gods-Design-for-the-Physical-World-Heat-and-Energy,5446,191.aspx) as our spine and making books that go along with each topic or lesson. It's worked really well. We're almost finished and will be putting everything together soon. So in answer to your question, I tack on the activity at the end of science time.

Another thing that I have done this year was start "Fun Fridays". I lessened the table work load for Fridays so we can do history and science activities.

[Narrow Gate Academy]

We tie our booklets into our studies and work on them during the scheduled time for that subject. For geography, our lapbook is our study. I made a booklet for each state with preprinted mapping activities and stickers for the kids to do. For science, I am also creating and planning the booklets ahead of time to go with Apologia Zoology 1 so the girls can fill in the information as we read. For history, I take the narrations that the girls do and type them up, add a picture (usually from HTTA), and then we print and assemble the booklet after our history reading another day. There are lots of pictures of our booklets on my blog under the weekly reports in the geography, history, and science section that you can look at to get a better idea of what we do.

HTH

[K&Rs Mom]

The one lapbook that we've done was to accompany Galloping the Globe (and thanks to everyone here, it came out great and was showed off to all of the relatives at Christmas :)). As we finished each continent, K made a book about what we had just done, so about one book every couple of weeks. Then we put it all together at the end of the entire unit.

Now we're doing SOTW1 and History Pockets the same way: as we get to each culture, we do that pocket (over a few days). So it will take most of a year to do the 7 pockets, at a rate of one every month or two.

[siloam]

how do you plan it ahead of time? Do you tie these things in with your studies, or just pick a random lapbook or activity to do and do it? I'm rethinking our school day and trying to add more activities, etc., and I have NO clue how to do this!

I have done it many ways.

Right now only my oldest cares to do lapbooking. I read aloud most her science and history and she is not at a point where she does well with having to later put that into writing (though she writes well, the fact based lapbooks hang her up as does spelling :rolleyes: ). So I buy the HOAC lapbooks with their nifty information guides, so she can read and copy the answers. I alternate science and history and I buy books that do coordinate to our other studies.

First I print off the whole lapbook, 3 hole punch it and put it into her binder. I put post-it flags at the beginning of the information guide and instruction section, including the lapbooks printed on plain white paper, so she can read any instructions she cuts off and doesn't save while cutting out the lapbook ;) Then I print out all the lapbooks on colored paper and put them on the right inside folder of the three ring binder.

Done. She just does one lapbook a day till it is finished then I print out another.

Heather

[HappyGrace]

I went to Homeschool Share, and that combined with the other practical ideas have me feeling for the first time that this is actually doable for me! I'm picturing this as an afternoon fun-time together, doing the unit studies with lapbooks from HS Share-I love how they do lit based unit studies so we have a starting point, and yet it's not too overwhelming. THANK YOU! (And I'm sure my children thank you!)