How to Plan a Lapbook

What will your lapbook be about? You can choose any topic under the sun!

Some moms use lapbooking to motivate a reluctant learner. For example, if your child loves animals, a horse or cat lapbook may really delight her. If your child is a fantasy fan, a lapbook on Narnia may be a winner.

Or maybe you want to choose one of the academic topics you're already studying. Don't look at lapbooking as adding something new or in addition to an already overloaded schedule. Consider lapbooking the way you will learn the topics you've already planned to study.

Once you've chosen an overall topic, break it down into the smaller chunks of information. These chunks or subtopics can be thought of as a day's lesson. List all of these on paper or use my lapbook planner page (free PDF). Be sure to list your reference material whether it be a book, a website, or a video.

At this step, you're simply choosing what to study about your topic.

Personally, I find that having a book serve as the basis of my study to be invaluable. I simple look through that main book, listing the main ideas that I want to be sure to cover.

How many chunks of information do you need? Well, each topic is different. It could be from eight to twenty! Don't worry if it seems too few. As you study, your children may ask questions you hadn't thought of which may lead to new subtopics.

The next step is where it gets fun! Take your list of subtopics/chunks of information, and consider what type of minibook would best fit the information.

Pencil in one or two minibook options on your list, beside each idea. (My lapbook planner has a space for this.)

There are lots of mini-books --a layered book, a circle book, a jigsaw book, a trifold, on and on. And you can get creative if you'd like! Create your own original folds or styles.

Some things lend themselves to certain types of folds. Lists work well in top tab books, life cycles are suited to wheel books, and timelines are perfect in accordion books, for example. But don't get bogged down in choosing the "perfect minibook" for this chunk of information. Generally any minibook will work for whatever type of information you want to record.

Now that you have a general plan, you do one of two things.

1. You can fine tune your plan by selecting exactly which minibook style to use for each chunk of information. Just aim for a variety of minibooks to give your lapbook more visual appeal. Try not to use a minibook style more than twice in one lapbook.

2. Or if you prefer to give your children more ownership in the process, give them options each day for the minibook style.

By the way, I don't plan the layout of the lapbook -- the actual placement of each minibook in the filefolder base. But you can if you want. That will lead to considerations of minibook size. Instead, I prefer to add more extensions to our lapbook if our books are too large or too many to fit on the base.