The Great Lakes Lapbook from In The Hands Of A Child ~ Review
I’ve loved the lapbook developed by In The Hands Of A Child for many years now. I started using these when my oldest was just a little kindergartener! So when I had the opportunity to review another one of their lapbooks I was super excited.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
The lapbook we have reviewed is The Great Lakes designed for children in grades 4 to 8.
What Is A Lapbook?
If you're wondering what a lapbook is, it is a file folder that has been folded to form a shutter fold book. Often for larger lapbooks you glue the folder flaps together to attach more than one file folder together.
This gives you a lot of room for attaching mini books. Little mini-book shapes are cut out and stapled together. After they have been filled with writing or pictures they are glued inside the file folder book.
The Great Lakes lapbook is a 78-page package. My kit was in PDF format that you need the free Adobe Reader to view.
The first section of the unit explains what a lapbook is and how to put together your lapbook and mini books. Then there is a suggested schedule that divided the unit up into an 8-day study.
Each day the students are to add a word or two and it’s definition to their vocabulary mini book. Then read a section out of the study guide and complete 3 mini book activities.
Topics Studied:
The Five Great Lakes
HOMES
Formation
Early People
Industry
Lake Huron
Lake Ontario
Freshwater Lakes
Lake Michigan
Lake Erie
Lake Superior
Wildlife
Shipping on the Great Lakes
U.S. Coast Guard
Tourism
Conserving
Vocabulary
In addition to the suggested 8-day schedule, there is a section called Activities and Instructions. This lists each activity by number and explains what you are to do with each mini-book.
For example what areas to colour and label on the maps. At the end of this section, there is also an extension activity you can do. For this Great Lakes unit, it was an experiment on comparing freshwater and saltwater.
The study guide is 16 pages long and I really liked how this one was laid out. Each section focuses on one specific aspect of the Great Lakes’ history.
There are also some interesting maps and drawings spread throughout the study guide. All the images are in black and white though. I know this makes it cheaper to print, but my children would prefer colour images.
Fun Great Lakes Unit Study
Overall we have really enjoyed using the Great Lakes lapbook unit. Since I have used In The Hands Of A Child units before I had a good idea of what to expect.
However, most of the units I had used in the past were for the lower age level. I found this one was still set up in a similar way.
The reading sections were not too long to be completed each day. Unfortunately, our library didn’t have the suggested extra reading books, so I substituted them with some we already had.
Perhaps an American library wouldn’t have this same problem. Mini books work well for my oldest because long sections of writing are hard for her to do.
However, some of the mini books required a larger amount of writing and these we spread over a few more days. Because of this, we used the unit for longer than 8 days.
My daughter loves art and craft type things so making the mini books alone is great fun for her!
We have really enjoyed working on this unit and plan to do a few more In The Hands Of A Child units in our upcoming school year.
