Lapbooks are mini-notebooks for…you guessed it… your lap!

But what do lapbooks really look like? And how can you best use them for science? Keep reading to find out.

What Are Lapbooks?

We love mixing things up a bit in our homeschool and throwing a lapbook or two into the mix.

But before I share about how you can use lapbooks, let’s chat about what lapbooks are. Here is my definition:

Lapbooks are educational scrapbooks that fit into the lap of a student.

Typically, lapbooks are a collection of related mini-books on a certain subject. These mini-books are glued into a file folder for easy viewing, but they can also include pictures or projects that the students have completed.

In the same way that notebooking does not require regurgitation of facts, lapbooking causes the students to interact with the materials instead of just responding to comprehension questions.

You can use lapbooks with any subject the students are learning about, making them extremely versatile. They are excellent tools to use with elementary students as a way of reinforcing what they are learning because this age group prefers a more creative format of notebooking.

The Mini-Book at the Heart of the Lapbook

The heartbeat of the lapbook is the mini-books that are placed inside.

• Mini-books contain information on topics related to the primary subject of the lapbook.

• Mini-books can be a variety of shapes and sizes, but the cover should have a picture related to the subject and a title.

• The interior of each mini-book should contain several sentences detailing what the students have learned about the topic in their own words.

• The mini-books each pertain to different sub-topics of the main lapbook topic.

So for instance, for a lapbook could have the major topic of “plants”. The related mini-books could then be on the types of leaves, the kinds of flowers, the parts of a seed, and more.

How Can You Use Lapbooks?

Now that we know a bit more about lapbooks, let’s look at three different ways you can use them in your homeschool:

1. You can use lapbooks to review a unit that you have just finished covering in your current curriculum.
2. You can use lapbooks to switch things up a bit by swapping a lapbook in for your regular notebook, logbook, or journal.
3. You can use a lapbook with your younger students, while your older students create a full notebook, logbook, or journal.

However you choose to use lapbooks in your homeschool, your students will benefit from these educational scrapbooks!

Science Lapbooks

The good news is that we have many lapbooks that go along with our science programs!

1. All our Science Chunks series have lapbook templates as part of each unit.
2. All our Sassafras Science novels have corresponding lapbooking guides, with templates.
3. All of our Grammar Stage Classical Science series have coordinating lapbooking templates.

If you have any questions about lapbooks and using them for science, don't hesitate to drop us a line!