We have three weeks of school left before Christmas
break. I am ready for something
different from our routine. So I’ve been
searching for lapbooks to work on during the countdown to Christmas. I think one a week is enough, but I have a
back-up fourth one just in case.
Lapbooks are a wonderful way to add some change to your
schooltime. They can replace your
standard curriculum or add to it. You
don’t even have to homeschool to use them with your kids, and they come in
ability levels from Preschool through High School.
We have used lapbooks to review something we’ve been
learning about. For instance, last year
the girls did a curriculum, The Prairie Primer, based around the Little
House on the Prairie books. At the end
of many of the books—we meant to do one after all of them, but it just didn’t
happen—we did a lapbook. We’ve done
lapbooks on Fridays, our normal “day off.”
We’ve supplemented science and social studies with lapbooks.
My favorite site for free lapbooks is:
They have tons of lapbooks based on different
books and subjects. We will be doing The
Polar Express and The Night Before Christmas lapbooks, and I may use
The Twelve Days of Christmas.
The other lapbook I plan to use is The Nativity. I found it for free at: http://www.lulu.com/shop/angela-frampton/nativity-lapbook/ebook/product-2033668.html
Monday we will start The Polar Express. Thursday the movie is on TV, so we can
compare the book—a beautiful book by Chris Van Allsburg—to the movie. It is a short, easy book to read, but never
grows old.
The following week we will do The Night Before Christmas. There are many versions of this poem, some
with gorgeous illustrations. I plan to
find several to compare.
The last week of school, we will leave the secular and
finish up with the true meaning of Christmas—The Nativity, and possibly The
Twelve Days of Christmas.
In addition to our lapbooks focused on Christmas, we are
doing a Jesse Tree for the first time.
The name alone has significant meaning to us because we lost a baby we
named Jesse on the day after Christmas 2006.
The Jesse Tree focuses on the lineage of Jesus, seeing how all of
history led up to His miraculous birth.
I found a couple of websites that provide ideas/devotions for the Jesse
Tree. This year we are using one offered
by http://www.feelslikehomeblog.com/ .
We start our morning with the Jesse Tree activities.
What are you doing to spice up the Christmas season in your
home? Lapbooks and the Jesse Tree are a
great way to involve your children in this special time of the year. You don’t have to homeschool to do
either. They are low-cost, low-effort, and
high learning. Now, get out there, Google
“lapbooks” and get learning in a new way!
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