Publishing Ideas for Student Writing Part 2 - Lapbooks and Folder Books

Yesterday, I wrote about the importance of recognizing the importance of your young writers' work. One way to accomplish this is by paying attention to the publishing part of the writing process. Yesterday I talked about publishing your children's writing projects through bound books. Today, I would like to focus on lapbooks and folder books.

There is so much information about lapbooking available on the internet! Here are a few of my favorite websites:

http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking

http://www.handsofachild.com/shop/

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/index_lapbooks_master_list.php

I enjoy lapbooking with my children because it gets them writing a whole bunch in little chunks. By the time they are finished with a lapbook, they have written a great deal about the subject - often as much as would be in a big report - but for the student it doesn't seem like they've completed a big report.

I also like lapbooking because it is easy to incorporate a wide variety of writing into a lapbook. For example, children can take notes, write sentences, write paragraphs, describe a sequence of events in steps, summarize information, write creatively - the list is endless. For the children, writing on a mini-book just seems more interesting than writing on a plain piece of paper!

I have been lapbooking with my children for several years now. We often make a lapbook as part of a unit study over a 4-8 week period of time.They have made lapbooks on many topics including:

• Medieval Times


• Human Body


• Lizards


• Butterflies


• The Ancient Aztecs


• Electricity


• Ohio


• Colonial Times


• Rocks and Minerals


• Multiplication


• Ancient Greece


• Cinderella Stories Around the World/Fractured Fairy Tales


• Animal Classification


• Germs


• Light


• Ancient China


• Ancient Egypt

As an example, here is the butterflies lapbook that my youngest completed a few years ago. I used a Project Pack from Hands of a Child for this lapbook project.

As another example, here is my youngest's Middle Ages lapbook that he completed during the 2008-2009 school year. I used a Project Pack from Hands of a Child for their Middle Ages lapbooks but we added lots of mini-books and other materials from other sources as well.

Based on the lapbook idea, we have also used file folders to publish lots of short reports on various topics. For example, during our study of Animal Classification last school year, each of the children had to complete a short report on an animal from each of the five categories of animals (reptile, amphibian, mammal, bird, fish).

My youngest chose to do a Puffer Fish for his fish report. Using a colored file folder for the base gave me a great way in which to publish his finished report.

Lapbooking and folder books are fun and creative ways in which to publish children's finished writing projects. In future posts, I'll talk about paper bag books, Bare Books, 3-ring binders, paper plate books, HUGE tri-fold display books, and posterboard books.