Lapbooking Versus Notebooking

A picture is worth a thousand words, so if you're not sure what a lapbook is, take some time to look at these lapbook examples.

For more photos of lapbooks, visit the Flickr Lapbooking group.

For more notebooking pages, visit the Flickr Notebooking group.

Here are photo examples of combining both lapbooking and notebooking.

Zuni pot minibook inside a notebook.



A four corner minibook in a notebook.



Monet matchbooks in a notebook.



Notebooking pages in an American Revolution lapbook.

If you want to learn more about how to use notebooking in your homeschool, Notebooking Success is a wonderful guide.

Written by a homeschool mom who has used notebooking for many years, Notebooking Success shows how to use notebooking to promote learning and retention. There are specific suggestions for different grade levels and for using notebooking with several styles of homeschool.

• Lapbooks are generally more suitable for smaller projects that will have a definite end to them, for example a unit study (the orchestra, volcanoes, or the rainforest) or a time period within your history curriculum (Colonial America, Ancient Greece, or New World Exploration).



• Notebooking, on the other hand, is often used when a topic or project is more ongoing and will have more related documentation.



• Many people transition from lapbooking to notebooking as their children age.



• Some people think that lapbooking fits a more creative child. Certainly, lapbooking does offer a lot of chances to be creative with colored papers, fancy folds, and artwork. But notebooking can be equally as creative. But if your child despises cutting, pasting, and drawing, you may want to avoid lapbooking or modify it to limit how much of the "crafty" part the child himself has to do.



• Some homeschoolers find certain topics lend themselves better to notebooking or to lapbooking.