Lap Books

Have you heard the term Lap Book in the home schooling world? It is a fun, hands-on way to learn that we discovered a couple of years ago and have been using to study American History. The basic theory is that you study a subject then make a Lap Book, much like a scrap book, of what you have learned. I found the manilla file folders work perfectly for holding our pictures and studies. It can become labor intensive on my part because I have to do all the researching at this point but as the kids are getting older it will also be used as a learning tool and they will be responsible for the researching and teaching part. We have learned about historical people that have shaped our country like Eli Whitney, George Washington, and Betsy Ross to name a few. We studied the presidential candidates in 2008 and made up mock ballets on the day of the election. Now which one of my children voted for Barrack Obama I would like to know! We have a history game that we have based the Lap Book schedule off of. The cards present 5 clues to guess who the person is. The last guess is to show the picture on the front. The plan is to study the history lesson and create the Lap Book on Wednesdays and on Mondays we go through all of the cards we have studied and play the game. It is a fun project that even Micah can play along with. Every once in a while the answer really is Christopher Columbus and he wins an M&M, too!