My Montessori Journey

Thanksgiving Lapbooks--Part 2

Here is the lapbook my 3-year-old son completed.  We did this over the course of a few days in bits and pieces.  The first thing he did was color the pumpkin pocket shown in the photo below.  He had amazing concentration for this and worked hard until he had completely colored it orange with a green stem.  He only left a few blank spots that he asked me to color for him.

I printed the Thankful Pictures and Pumpkin Pocket from Christian Preschool Printables.  (They have LOTS of free printables on their website.) My son and I looked through the pictures and put the ones that showed what he is thankful for into the pumpkin pocket.

On the inside left page of the lapbook are a maze printed from Kaboose (free) and a counting crows worksheet printed from Kidssoup (this page was a member-only printable).  I cut apart the crow counting worksheet into individual boxes and let my little boy use number stamps to stamp the numbers for the quantities since he can't write yet.  The next photo shows the counting pages out of the pocket.  

 

Also on the left side is a little library pocket I printed from Homeschoolshare.  They have the most amazing amount of free resources to print.  (I found the template for the pocket after I had already done the other one for the crow counting cards.) I will definitely be blogging about that website more in the future as I am SURE I will be using some of their activities both at home and at school.  Inside the little pocket are some Thanksgiving ABC cards I made and printed up.  If you would like you are welcome to print them off for your own use.  Here is the document link: Download Thanksgiving lapbook ABC   My son is just beginning to associate printed letters with their sounds and make the connection between a given sound and things beginning with that sound.  So we just went through the cards and talked about that "/t-t-t-/ T is for /t-t/ turkey", etc.  Below is a photo of the ABC cards.

On the right hand side I stapled a Mayflower tracing paper from Kidssoup.  My little guy worked really hard at tracing the blue waves and yellow sun.  He was so proud of himself.  Beneath the Mayflower paper we glued a little brown die-cut Mayflower that we got for free from our local public library.  (Thanks, Miss Teresa, if you're reading this!)

   

And on the back cover is a jigsaw puzzle I printed from DLTK. To help him complete the puzzle since it was made of paper, I first glued the top left piece down and then had him make the puzzle.  Then I helped him glue them in place.  See photo below for the puzzle (Don't you love those little fingers at the bottom?  I know I do!)

 

As promised, here are some links to a few great lapbooking resources I've found online:

1+1+1=1 is a great blog with LOTS of great resources and links.  In addition to several lapbook posts, you MUST checkout the TotSchool posts if you have a little one at home.  Lots of super ideas!

Homeschoolshare is also an amazing wealth of free information.  In addition to an extensive lapbook section, there are many, many great resources for unit studies on a variety of non-fiction topics as well as many great children's books.  I am greatly looking forward to exploring this site a lot more.

Lapbook Lessons is another site where you can sign up for free to access lots of great printables.  

Enchanted Learning and Kidssoup are two paid membership sites that I belong to.  They both have a wealth of great resources and I consider them well worth the membership fees.

DLTK-Kids has many, many free printables that would work great in your lapbooks.  I used several of their printables for our Thanksgiving books. 

  

Thanksgiving Lapbooks--Part 1

I have been wanting to do lapbooks with my boys for quite a while now.  I often look at the blogs of homeschooling moms and have seen lapbooks on several of them.  (BTW.....you may not realize this, but I am kind of a homeschool wanna-be.........I am really happy with the school situation for both of our boys, but I also frequently have little homeschool "fantasies" in my head which usually involve me being able to sleep in ever so slightly every morning after which I head outside to milk our (currently non-existent) cows, then use the milk to churn butter with the boys, etc.........like I said, pure fantasy and I'm digressing!)  ANYWAY...........I decided to dive into the lapbook thing and have each of the boys make a Thanksgiving lapbook.  I was greatly inspired by this post at the 1+1+1=1 blog.  After reading that post and checking out what Carisa (the blog author) had done with her son, I decided to give it a go.  Today I am posting the lapbook my oldest son made.  He is 7.  Tomorrow I will post about the one my 3 1/2 year-old did. 

  

Here is the front of my oldest son's lapbook.  I was going to do a fancy fold with the file folder, but found that using it "as is" worked better for the projects I had for him.  I printed the turkey shown on the cover from DLTK. He used some of my scrapbooking stamps to stamp "Thanksgiving" on the front.

  

Here is the inside of his book with the flap folded down.  I needed more room than just one file folder so I cut a second folder in half and taped it to the inside at the top.  That is the "flap" with the colored turkey on it. I printed this turkey from Kaboose.  The ABC order cut and paste was a worksheet from Enchanted Learning that I cut apart so it would fit better into the book.

  

This shows a close-up of the inside left page of the lapbook.  The Syllable Matching with Thanksgiving words worksheet  was also printed from Enchanted Learning (I have a membership which is required to be able to print these pages.)

  

This photo shows the lapbook with the flap "up". On the underside of the flap is a Thanksgiving crossword puzzle printed from DLTK.  The Thanksgiving maze is from Kaboose (they had several versions in varying difficulty levels; I printed an easier one for my younger son's lapbook).  The First Thanksgiving mini-book was printed from Teacher Vision.  I am not a member of this website, but it looks like you can print up to 3 items for free.  The little orange pocket has a folded up math worksheet that I printed from KidZone.  There are many different free math worksheets available at this site.  You can see the unfolded paper in the photo below. 

  

 

This photo shows the back of my oldest son's lapbook.  The puzzle was printed from DLTK......there are several puzzles available for printing in various difficulty levels. 

My oldest son enjoyed doing his lapbook very much.   He wanted to pretty much do all the activities in one sitting.  As I've looked at the lapbooks of other moms and teachers, I would say that this lapbook was more about "fun" than actual learning.  It was our first attempt at lapbooking and my purpose, more than anything, was to give him a variety of Thanksgiving theme-related activities to do.  However, I am already thinking ahead to the type of lapbook we could do for Thanksgiving next year that would include more research and learning about the first Thanksgiving and the Mayflower voyage.

In tomorrow's post I will include a bunch of links I've found for free lapbook resources on the good ol' 'net!