Creating A Literature Lapbook & Lapbooking Tips

Over the past two years we’ve been increasingly adding lapbooks into our learning.  At first I bought lapbook kits and followed every single direction.  For me the idea of taking file folders and creating a stimulating educational project seemed impossible. There are great companies like A Journey Through Learning  that are a wonderful resource for complete lapbook kits.  You can read about our free 17th Century Lapbook that we created using their products here.

Fast forward to today, and we’re still loving our lapbooks.  Only present day I’ve overcome my file folder fears.  Most of the time I now create our own lapbooks with a combination of resources. I’ve come to see lapbooking as a personalized visual record of what each child has learned. 

It came to my attention this week that we needed to compile a literature lapbook highlighting some of our summer family read alouds.  Of course like many families, most days flew by within our summer adventures. Even though we were on-the-go I had the children complete copywork and a simple drawing from each book that we completed.

The covers of the boys literature lapbooks.

• Don’t be intimidated by lapbooking or creating your own project.  For these projects I simply typed the name of each book in a funky font using MS Word. I printed the list of titles and had Jadin and Zion do their own cutting.  You can see that each boy freely created something a little different for their lapbook covers.

• K.I.S.S. {Keep It Simple Sweeite} We used the simple method of the children copying a favorite paragraph from each story.  Then they drew a picture to go along with their writing.  These are “bare bones” lapbooks. There are no minibooks, special charts or additional flaps-just the boys drawings and writings.

Here’s part of the inside of Jadin’s lapbook:

One of the drawings that Jadin created, inspired by The Trumpet of the Swan. 

  Here’s part of the inside of Zion’s lapbook:

• Protect your books: I use plastic sheet protectors that I cut along the bottom and side to protect each lapbook.  Then each child has their own large binder to store their lapbooks in.

• Have a lapbook day:  Even though this literature lapbook was very basic, it still took several hours of clipping, gluing and drawing pictures for it to be completed. We devoted an entire day to just completing this lapbook.  More intense lapbooks take several project days for completion.  The 17th Century lapbook that I referenced above took one day per week over several months.

• Be Realistic:  In the Spring & Summer I don’t plan any lapbooks.  I know our family is itching to get outdoors and enjoy country life, roadschooling, frogs and tire swings.  I plan large lapbooks for late fall, winter and early spring.  Once the weather hits 60 degrees the lapbooks hibernate for the season.

Those are some of my lapbooking tips and our latest simple project.

More FREE Lapbooking Resources:

Spice Up Your Learning By Making Lapbooks! {w/ Jimmie on Squidoo}

Lapbook Lessons: Free Lapbooks

Homeschool Share: Free Lapbooks {My favorite site!}

Homeschool Helper Online: Free Lapbooks

Dynamic 2 Moms: Lots of free Lapbooks

The Homeschool Mom: Many Lapbooking articles and resources

Lapbooking 101

How to Begin Lapbooking Video

These are my amazon affiliate links.  Should you buy *a lot* on Amazon using these links I will receive a small portion back, which in turn I will buy more file folders.  Thanks for supporting our homeschool!