How to Write for Homeschoolers: Lapbooking Basics Part Five-Using Lapbooks in Your Writing

When we started this series about lapbooking, I told you that a lapbook is a hands-on way to help students, generally in elementary through middle school, learn material. Your goal when creating lapbooks that complement your writing projects is to create fun, hands-on ways students can absorb key information.

For example:

• Does your story have an historic setting? Lapbooks are the perfect way to share dates, facts, and terminology, including the details you weren’t able to fit into your finished work.
• Is your story about animals? Animals are wildly popular lapbook topics. Study the life cycle of an animal important to your story and build your questions and projects from there.
• Is your story set in outer space? Even if your story takes place on a fictional planet, you can build a lapbook about space or space exploration.
• What if your story takes place in a fictitious land filled with strange creatures? How did your character arrive there? Did they travel by tornado? There is a science and weather lapbook in there. Did they travel through time? If they traveled to the past, history is a solid choice. If they traveled to the future, what things did they find were different? Vehicles? Technology? Clothing? Choose one of them and create a lapbook about the ways it has changed through recorded history.

Lapbook Directions

There is one final element your lapbook requires—directions. The best way to get a feel for how to write the directions is to read several lapbooking packets and see how they are written. Your instructions will fall into two parts: what you want the student to do with the information and what you want the student and/or parent to do with the lapbook template itself.

Let’s look again at the wheel template from last week, and I’ll show you what I mean. The students need to create a wheel that answers the following questions:

How many joeys are born at one time to a mother kangaroo? How much do they weigh at birth? How long do they stay in their mother’s pouch? Can they see when they are born?

The instructions could read like this:

• Activity instructions: Answer each question on a separate section of the wheel.
• Cut and fold instructions: Cut the wheel base and cover out along the outer, dark line. Cut out the window section of the wheel cover. Place the cover on top of the base and attach both to the file folder with a brad.

I hope you have enjoyed this series on lapbooks! Please share in the comment section any questions you have or news of completed projects you’d like to tell us about!