Winter Vacation Book

We had such a great time on our trip up North. I've lived in South Florida all my life and had only seen snow once and my boys never had! I know anyone who lives day in and day out with snow and ice will probably roll their eyes, but for us a week in Chicago and Wisconsin was a blast! I decided to make a combination scrapbook/ altered book using all the maps, tickets and other memorabilia along with mini-photos of our trip. Here are the first several pages:

Works in Progress

While I'd love to post pictures of the lapbooks we've been working on for the past several weeks I have to confess that we have (at least) three in progress and none completed. We have a lot of info on these two topics: Working Dogs and Thanksgiving, and we've recently been motivated to learn about Snow and Winter since we'll be traveling North for winter vacation. In the meantime we have managed to decorate for Christmas and I have this to offer:

Dragonfly

This doesn't pertain to our lapbooks, but the boys and I were at the park today and the dragonflies were buzzing around. They are so fascinating with their ability to hover and zip all over the place. I caught one resting on a twig and as its little wings glinted barely purple in the sun.

Using photos in a lapbook

I like to use our own photos in our lapbooks, but printing can get expensive. While printing pictures from my SD card using the kiosk at my local CVS pharmacy I discovered that you can print mini-photos which consist of 9 pictures on a 4X6" sheet for only 29 cents! That's about 3 cents per picture. Yes, they're pretty small but they're still amazingy clear and colorful and while they're tough to see online they work fine in person. And it makes a lapbook much more personalized which my boys love.

History of Halloween

I actually made this lapbook for the boys as a homeschool "gift" from Mommie ; ) It's kind of crafty cutsey because I used scrapbook stuff for the decorations but I did actually research the origins of the holiday and learned a lot myself about the Celts and Romans and how they shaped what we now celebrate as Halloween.

Dinosaurs

Two of our local museums recently had exhibits about dinosaurs so we gathered information from them as well as National Geographic and books from the library. We also watched a couple of videos about dinosaurs and archaeology.

The Five Senses

I used a set from the educational store for the colorful titles and graphics and we supplemented with materials from edhelper.com and enchantedlearning.com.

Saturn and the Cassini-Huygens Probe

We went to our local planetarium and saw a presentation about Saturn and the Cassini-Huygens probe. We made 3-D models (which you can see in a picture on the front of the lapbook) of the probe and collected a lot of cool information.

Bats and building a bat house

I don't remember exactly how we got interested in bats. We did see a lot of them on a summer vacation in Virginia and when we go to the zoo they're always a favorite. We got a lot of great photos from National Geographic for this lapobook.

Coral Reef Life

We're lucky to live near the Florida Keys so now that the boys are old enough to snorkle we got excited about learning about coral, how reefs develop, and the fish and other creatures that live there. It has been wonderful for us to spot types of coral and fish we learned about making this lapbook.

Dragons

We fell in love with Brendon Fraser's reading of Cornelia Funke's "Dragonrider" (as well as dragons' roles in other favorite stories) and that led us to looking at the mythology of dragons in different times in the world.

Sharks

We went to our local Museum of Science and Discovery to see an IMAX 3D about sharks and that led us to our next lapbook. We cut out great pictures from an old National Geographic and the boys made a couple of small mini-books about the different types of sharks and different types of shark fins. This was also the lapbook in which we decided to add a "References" note.

Our Pet Book, Fall 2006

Time to do a new folder to include all of the new characters in our zoo ...

The Life Cycle of Monarch Butterflies

Spending time in plant nurseries led us to our next lapbook on monarch butterflies. We were looking at some broccoli plants when Patrick noticed caterpillars on some flowers. The smallest ones were less than 1/4" long! We decided it would be great to take a couple of plants home and watch the caterpillars turn into butterflies : )

Our First Garden

During the prep time before Hurricane Wilma we made several trips to Home Depot. Brian saw seed packets for sale and decided he wanted to plant something. We were more focused on the storm but finally helped him plant a dozen or so squash seeds in a large rubbermaid container. And despite the storm and being hauled to Jacksonville afterward, and then transplanted twice, the squash flourished. That was the beginning of our first ever vegetable garden. Wilma had destroyed our fenced dog kennel so that area became a garden. We dug up the grass and put down good soil to transplant the squash plants into. Over the next several weeks we added sweet peas, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes and green beans. We watched every day as the plants flowered and grew taller. Some mornings the boys literally woke me up with "Let's go outside and check on the garden!" : )

And then there was Wilma...

We had finished our first folder about our pets when Hurricane Wilma decended upon us. It took us weeks to complete and again, is more of a scrapbook than an academically focused unit study, but our Hurricane Wilma scrapbook is one that Brian and Patrick go back to look at again and again.

Our first lapbook: Our Pets, Fall 2005

We did our first lapbook in the fall of 2005. I had discovered Dinah Zike's The Big Book of Books but wasn't quite sure what to do with the ideas inside it. So we started by doing a folder about our pets which kept the boys interested and introduced them to the lapbooking format.

Getting started

Hi--
We discovered lapbooking a couple of years ago and it has evolved to become the main source of structure in our eclectic homeschool. We focus on our boys' (ages 7 1/2, NT and 11, ASD) interests, help them do research, and tie it all together with a lapbook that they can go back to look at as many times as they like. I'll be posting photos of all of the lapbooks we've done as well as links to some of my favorite sites and resources.
: )
Laura