In getting ready to go “back to homeschool,” I decided to spend a few hours making minibooks one afternoon when my husband took Sprite to the pool. It was time well spent. Now I have quite an assortment of sizes, colors, and shapes for Sprite to use for the next few months.
We certainly do plenty of “fly by the seat of your pants” homeschooling, but I also love the feeling of having supplies ready to go. Just looking at that bulging ziplock full of possibilities makes me giddy.
Sprite saw it and said, “Wow! Mom, you made a TON of minibooks!” As she flipped through the new styles, I gave her an evil laugh and told her that I was intending for her to do lots and lots of written narrations this year.
So what was my plan of attack? First I used Microsoft Publisher to make some templates that I printed onto white cardstock. Then I cut out my templates and used them with all colors of paper to make the blank minibooks.
This is a new style — a speech bubble shaped trifold, simple single fold, and shape book. I thought it would be perfect for quotations or narrating what a certain person taught or discovered.
Another new design is this arrow tab. I was inspired by something uploaded at Homeschool Share’s NEW printables.
Accordion folds are such adaptable minibooks, so I made lots of these.
To make a template, just copy and paste your shape, lining up the sides of same lengths.
And here are old standbys that I created without templates.
Flag books & layered books.
What a wonderful pile of mini books. We start back with all of our new books today. Well, some of our new books today. The kids are excited to look over everything.
Blessings,
Dawn
What a good idea to pre-make mini books! We made a few lapbooks last year and my daughter loved to do it, but it was pretty labor-intensive for me. This would make the process much smoother!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. Pretty cool to have a homeschool blog celebrity leave a comment! 😉
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Big time LOL!
I cannot find the arrow tabbed books on HSS. Could you send me the link. Thanks.
There’s no link. I saw a similar book and made my own. So sorry. I think it was part of the BEAR theme lapbook. Hunt around and try to find it. I honestly don’t remember.
Couldn’t you just make a square mini book template and add the arrow tab to it?
Oh no, my daughter sat here and looked at this with me. She immediately placed her order. Great idea though!
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These are great! We don’t use lapbooks, but I know my kids would still love these mini-books. What a great weekend project!
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I have always wondered how you had time for so many lapbooks!!! My skin crawled imagining having to stop and make a book or whatever was needed for a certain part of a lapbook. This makes perfect sense! Though I admit, lapbooks still seem like more than I can do. 🙂
When we finish up WinterPromise this year, we will move on to Mystery of History. I think I will try to add some of these minibooks to our lessons. We should have some extra time with our new curriculum– at least I hope we do!
Great idea to plan ahead. I mean, I know that we know that we should do all these things since it just makes sense. But sometimes we just don’t get it done for whatever reason.
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We love lapbooking.
.-= Martha´s last blog ..Great Lapbooking Sale Going On =-.
Woah!!! That’s some serious hard work there! How long did it take you to make that little stash?
I have to say, this lapbooking thing leaves me totally confused. I have no idea where to start or where to go with it. It would be like dropping me off in downtown Moscow and saying “okie dokie, go ahead and speak Russian….” I am in awe that it seems to come so naturally to you.
One step at a time, Keeley. We first JUST made minibooks — or should I say A minibook. Then another and another until we had a handful and then we just put them into a lapbook or notebook.
Thanks so much! This will be a huge help to us! I can’t wait to get started.
.-= Deb´s last blog ..Rise Up and Build =-.
We’re just about to start our first lapbook. Can you tell me whether you write directly onto the coloured card, or whether those are just covers and you somehow fix white pages inside to write on – if you fix pages in how do you do that, just with regular PVA glue or is there a trick I need to know about?!
Thanks for the lovely photos, they are really inspiring and I can’t wait to have a go myself!
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Wow! I’m trully impressed and inspired by your productive afternoon! This has spurred me on to do more minibooks and store them in a ziplock next to my templates. I think we would do more minibooks this way!
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I’m glad you like the idea, Nadene. (I’m pretty flattered if I can impress YOU!)
Do you have a template for the mini lap books?
Thanks,
Jennifer
Check with Homeschool Share, Jennifer. There are lots of great printables there.