How to Use Lapbooks for Science
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Lapbooks are a creative way for your little one to organize their narrations and show off what they know. You can use lapbooks for any subject, however, history and science are great content subjects to display in a lapbook.
With any good lapbook, you don’t want to stop there, don’t forget to incorporate the science experiments, just because you’re completing a lapbook doesn’t mean you get to forgo the experiments which are super hands on and fun for your kids.
We do science 3 times a week. The first day we complete an experiment. The second day, he writes about the experiment in a written narration, and then the third day he works on two or three minibooks for his lapbook. My son, M1, is a visual learner so I’ve learned that it’s best to do the experiments first and then read and discuss what is happening with the experiments.
We usually try to stick to a theme based on the 4 year history cycle from The Well-Trained Mind, each year you would study biology, earth science, chemistry and then physics. We’ve broken away from that path and I’ve let him choose what topic he’d like to study and then I find the necessary resources.
I don’t have a set curriculum for biology we use various experiment books and then use our Science Encyclopedia and library books to research the topic. If you’re not sure what to include in your lapbook, I always take a look at the table of contents in the science book to see what major topics are covered. This gives you a great idea of what topics you should cover as well.
We always round out our science lesson with the appropriate Magic School Bus or Bill Nye Video. I don’t use a set curriculum since science is my thing, I haven’t found one curriculum that covered everything the way that I wanted to so I use a bunch of free resources and come up with my own thing.
What should you include in your science lapbook?
- definitions
- timeline
- compare and contrast
- important scientific figures in history
- methods or special instruments used
- hypothesis
- experiments
- observations and diagrams
- conclusions
- awesome or useful facts
- matching
If you are working on an animal lapbook you can include:
- vocabulary
- maps
- habitat
- classification
- diet
- prey/predators
- behavior
- characteristics
- life cycle
- conservation
Great science lapbook resources:
- Homeschool Share
- Iman’s Home-school
- Mammals @Awake to Purpose
- Yee Shall Know – lapbooks based on The Magic Schoolbus
Paid science lapbooks:
See a list of my favorite Biology Books for Kids.
You can the other post in my 5 day series Homeschooling with Lapbooks.
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Dawn @ Double O Farms ~ Helping Your Struggling Learner
Gena @ I Choose Joy! ~ Homeschooling Middle School
Christine @ Our Homeschool Reviews ~ Free and Frugal Homeschooling
DaLynne @ For the Display of His Splendor ~ Diagramming the Proverbs
