The preassembled lap books interest me because one of my sons would get "lost" in the cutting and gluing and miss the wonderful opportunity to see the unit summarized. I am curious about the use of these as compared to the kits where they are already printed on paper for the student to cut and paste. Here's my question for now:

1. Are the little books already glued into the lap books or do you choose the little books to glue in based on the sections of the unit your family covered?

Everything is glued in that should be glued in. Some things are inserted into pockets so you can remove them to work on and look at them.

So if you don't study a particular subject during the unit it is still in the lap book?

I was thinking the lap books would be a representative of what the child learned from week to week.

Would you describe how the pre-assembled books have benefitted your child?

We have used the preassembled lapbooks this year with my UG student. We have really loved them. It has benefited us because she completes her lapbook on Fridays and it really shows how much she has retained throughout the week as she fills in each section assigned. It has led to additional discussions when she doesn't know the answer and needs to refer back to materials that we have read.

I personally thought it would be too time consuming to assemble them ourselves (kinda lame I know) so I have no experience with the CDs. My goal this year was to do more of the hands on activities so having the lapbook preassembled frees us up for more time with those.

We will definetely be using them again next year even though she will be in the Dialecic level.

HTH,

Lisa W. in Las Vegas

How did you deal with sections that were glued in that you did not cover during that week?

quote:

Originally posted by Ali in TX:
So if you don't study a particular subject during the unit it is still in the lap book?

I was thinking the lap books would be a representative of what the child learned from week to week.

Would you describe how the pre-assembled books have benefitted your child?

Ahem, I did not use them for long. For my D level student they were too little or repetitive in terms of his Thinking and Accountability Questions. He does that work on computer.

For my UG I'm afraid I found them too much like school busy work. I think the idea of creating your own lap book is great, but for us the pre-done lap books were just so much blank filling in. Since I wanted to spend time on more interesting projects (making helmets or abacuses) I made the choice to stop using the first lap book, pretty quickly.

How did you deal with sections that were glued in that you did not cover during that week?

We never skipped any sections. They really arent' that time consuming for us. We spend maybe 15-20 minutes on Fridays filling in the sections. They are sometimes given the option of drawing a picture in the books, for example my dd decided to draw a picture on Colonial transportation rather than write about it. They usually only have 2-3 sections assigned weekly, so they have them spaced out nicely. My dd usually ends up writing or drawing more than is required of her in these. I don't know if we have enjoyed them so much because I have a girl? I don't know... we love them !

Lisa W. in Las Vegas.

My 4th grade son does the lapbooks. He does not like arts and crafts and isn't really into them, so this is nicer. The pre assembled lapbooks are perfect. Some of it is busywork, but the exercise of keeping things neat and professional looking is good training for him. There are times we don't get to everything. I don't sweat it. The point for us is that the lapbook is an avenue to focus our study, little bits at a time.

Since the lapbooks usually are supposed to work for a couple of learning levels (LG, UG, etc.), it is very possible to have sections in the lapbook that your student doesn't cover if the student is younger. The only way to deal with that is to leave it blank!!! Or, you could paste something over the text that is there and turn that part of the lapbook into something you did study a little more. I.e., my lapbook from Knowledge Box Central doesn't have a section on Pieter Bruegel. I could take another part that I didn't cover and turn that into Pieter Bruegel by sticking whatever is needed over the preprinted words of the minibook for the material not covered, turning it into a Pieter Bruegel book.

I don't know of any other options!

Deanna