Charlotte Mason was an advocate of living books and narration. And book summary lapbooks are a modern way to combine these two!

As fans of living books, narration, and Miss Mason, we wanted to share with you all how to make your own beautiful book summary lapbooks.

This method will work for any book you read!

Plus, the final product is a great way to showcase what your students are learning to the grandparents.

Let's dig in . . .

What Are Book Summary Lapbooks?

A book summary lapbook is an interesting way to write and share a basic book report. It is a collection of mini-books that summarize each chapter of the book you have read.

In other words, a student's narrations, or thoughts, from each chapter of a book are recorded in an easy-to-find, eye-catching format. No more boring book report to write, read, and loose!

These beautiful lapbooks serve as treasures to reflect on how a book has impacted you and your student.

How To Make Your Own Book Summary Lapbook

Now that you understand the basics, let's look at how to put these puppies together!

You will need:

• A book to read
• A file folder
• Pencils (regular and colored)
• A glue stick
• Paper for making mini-books (or download this set of five book summary lapbook templates for free)

What to do:

With the supplies in hand, it's time to get to work.

#1 - Read a chapter from the book you selected.

You can read the aloud or have your students read it to themselves - whatever works best for your situation.

#2 - Discuss what you read.

After you finish reading, discuss the chapter with your students. You can ask questions like:

• What happened in this chapter?
• Can you share something that you found interesting in this chapter?
• Was there anything that you did not like from this chapter?
• Tell me about your favorite part of the chapter.

#3 - Come up with a one to three sentence narration.

Once you finish your discussion time, ask the students to come up with a one to three sentence narration. You can write this down for them so they can copy it later or just have them write it down on their own - this will depend upon where they are with their writing skills.

#4 - Make a mini-book for the narration.

Here comes the fun! Have the students make a mini-book of their own design or use one of these free book summary lapbook templates. Once they have the mini-book in hand, have them write their narration from the previous step inside.

And, have the students decorate the cover with a picture that best represents the chapter they read. They can draw these or print off a picture from the Internet.

#5 - Glue the mini-book in your lapbook.

And once the student has their stunningly-decorated mini-book in hand, have them glue it into the interior of the file folder.

A word of caution - make sure you plan out where the mini-books will go, so there will be enough room for each one. You can do this by counting up the number of chapters in the book and figuring how to fit that many mini-books into the file folder beforehand.

Wrapping It Up

At the end of the book, you will want them to add a cover to their lapbooks to complete these beautiful book summaries. But it really is that easy!

Books summary lapbooks are flexible tools we can use to create personalized, gorgeous summaries of what a book has meant to us!