Lapbooking
I’m trying to migrate my data from my old laptop to my new one and it’s taking unbelievably long. Now I remember why I hate changing laptops. So while I’m twiddling my thumbs, I may as well do some blogging.
I have been reading up on homeschooling. Not that I’m going to homeschool 宝贝, I simply don’t have the time, resources and patience to do it. But I thought I could take a page out of it and do it with her whenever I have the time. One interesting activity that homeschoolers usually do, is lap booking. It’s usually based on a certain topic, that’s of current interest to the child and she needs to create the book herself, based on research, under the guidance of the teacher (parent in this matter). I like the idea. Because I believe that children (for that matter, anyone, including adults) learn better when they find out the information themselves, through their own methods.
And I kind of like scrapbooking myself. Heheh. Although I never got around to doing it. But Lapbooking looks very similar to scrapbooking.
So I searched online on scrapbooking. I will post the links I have found at the end of the post. Most of the material are tailored for the older children. And when the children are older, it’s actually more open ended. For example, if the child is interested in the solar system, the parents bring him to the science center to gather information or he will be able to find the information from the internet. After information gathering, he needs to put them together in a logical manner on the lap book. And of course, if he’s particularly artistic, he can design the layout and presentation to his own satisfaction. At the end of the day, he will have a lap book that is wholly done by him (it reminds me of my final year thesis… which is of a much dryer topic), and he’s able to refer to it in future. But, if he has made it himself, he usually will be able to remember the facts and information.
But for toddlers, it’s much harder. She’s almost 3 and can hardly surf the net or gather information herself. There are fewer things that can be done with them. There are actually activities books in the market that are meant for her age and learning level. Although she’s doing them, but I’m not sure if she really remembers them at the end of the day. It’s more like a “ok, i’ve finished this book, next…” kind of thing. So one way would be to mutilate the activity books, form your own material and then guide her through the entire process.
I started her off with an “A” book. Everything to do with As. It took the whole afternoon although it looked pretty elementary… I bought construction paper from the book shop, a toddler scissors, prepared her coloring pencils, crayons, pens, glue, and printed everything to do with As on paper.
I told her that we were going to make a book. She was really enthusiastic about it. She loves artwork of all kinds… She set there, brandishing her new scissors, eagerly waiting for me to dish out activities for her to do. We started off by sorting the As in big and small caps. A piece of cake for her as she knew it long time ago, but she found it fun, because the As were printed in different fonts. (top left hand corner of the book). I just wanted to start her off with an easy activity. Then I cut out a huge apple for her and she used her A chops to beautify it. We also did an alligator poem, but she didn’t look too interested in it though… Alligators aren’t exactly the cutest A creature on Earth. And of course, words that start with the letter A. After that, I wrote the words on flash cards and stuck them on her magnetic wall board and she’s supposed to teach every adult in the house the words (she loves being the teacher…). Then the tracing of the letter As (she stuck them on the back of the book, so it’s not in the picture). She looked really comical when she was looking very serious while tracing the letters.
Finally she arranged her material nicely on the lap book in the order that she would like to stick them in. She applied the glue stick generously over the bits of paper and over my poor wooden table, and stuck them coherently (pretty good for her age) on the book. Her end product —
She wrote the word apple herself… quite illegible, but I’m confident that she will just get better. 🙂
The final touch –
She proudly printed her name (in her best handwriting) on the front of the book.
There! Voila! The finished product. She’s been pestering me to do a “B” book with her every since…. Sigh.. I need to prepare the material, set aside one afternoon and do it together with her. I’m also planning to increase her letter A vocabulary by printing out pictures and words that start with A… So much to do and so little time… When I get around with the B book, I will post some pictures on it…
There are many links out there. Just do a google…Interesting Lapbooking links :