Lapbooking: Part 2 Minibooks

I am frequently asked questions about how we homeschool.
Since I can't invite you all over to my house to show you how we do it, I thought that 
on Fridays, I'd try and share different creative ideas that we use to homeschool.


Last week Jimmie from Jimmie's Collage introduced us to lapbooking and shared
with us some of her Flickr Photos of lapbooks that she has created.


This week she is going to be sharing how minibooks create a physical scaffold 
for the information that goes into our lapbooks.


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When you select a minibook that matches the type or amount of 

information, you have created a physical scaffold for the information.

This learning scaffold makes the ideas easier to understand and to remember. Young

children are not abstract thinkers. Anything a homeschool mom can do to make that

understanding tangible will help the children to learn. 


Minibooks can make ideas more concrete.

Take this solar eclipse minibook as an example. This simple accordion fold book

divides the information visually into four parts: the earth, the moon, the sun, and a

panel for explanation. The folds of the book itself contribute to the 

significance of the science facts in the book. 


Without the earth, moon,and sun lined up correctly, there is no solar eclipse. 


Yes, the same idea could be represented on a plain sheet of paper, but the folds help 
to outline the facts in a very visual way.

 

Another example is from a Chemistry lapbook. 
This minibook features the five elements in the Nitrogen family. 


Each element gets its own matchbook within the larger folder. So the physical minibook

reflects the reality that these elements are all 
different (separate matchbooks) but related (placed in a single minibook).

There are myriad ways to organize information, so don’t worry about getting it

wrong. But do be deliberate to match the minibook’s layout and its folds with the contents. 


If your material is three steps, have a three flap layered book (or four flaps if you leave one 
for the title page). If your content is a list of equally important information, a wheel book may 
work well. Don’t be obsessive over making the content match the form, but do keep it in mind.

What is so important about organizing information? 
The answer is writing. 


The same mental process involved in 

dividing information into a minibook is used in composition.

In fact, you can look at most minibooks as paragraphs. The title page is the

topic sentence, and the pages or flaps are the main ideas in the paragraph. There is a

direct application from minibooks to organizing paragraphs and even essays. That makes

minibooks tiny, movable graphic organizers.

If you have questions about how to use lapbooking, please feel free to leave

them in a comment below. I’ll check back and provide my answers. And, readers, please

feel free to answer each other’s questions. We all have something to offer.

 

Jimmie Lanley is the mother of one creative twelve year old daughter. 

Jimmie's Collage is where she blogs about her Charlotte Mason styled homeschool.

 The Notebooking Fairy features free notebooking printables and how-tos plus the affordable eBook guide Notebooking Success.