The concept of the "lapbook" seems to be quite popular among homeschoolers for literature, unit studies, geography, etc. I loved the idea of having a fun, visual reminder of what was learned. Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler has a great explanation about what lapbooks are and how to make them right here.
I also love using the Literature Pockets curriculum published by Evan Moor to study picture books with my kids when they're preschool through 2nd grade. They have 3 or so art projects for each story that help the child explore themes, characters, vocab, story sequencing, etc. Here you can see how they suggest to make the pockets to store the projects of each story.
These end up being very large (12X12)! They don't fit nicely on a shelf or in a basket or storage box. So I took the lapbook and literature pockets ideas and made up my own hybrid that has worked for us for about 6 years. I don't have a great name for them; we just call them notebooks.
I only do this for our literature studies. The kids love looking at their completed notebook at the end of the school year and remembering all the books they studied and the art projects they did for them.
I just use regular 9X12 construction paper that I punch with 6 holes and bind with yarn. See how loose the yarn is? These are the new ones the kids are using this school year. By the end of the year, they're so full of papers and projects that you need lots of space to expand! The kids get to design their own cover for the front of their notebook.
The one below belongs to Quartus for this year. See all the different colors of paper? He's going to study 6 Folk Tales and so that means 6 different colored sections (plus a blue front cover and a beige back cover.) The kids get to choose their own colors. My littles only need 2 pages for each story.
The big kids (3rd grade and up) study 3 chapter books per year so their notebooks have only 3 sections, but they need several sheets of each color because they have a lot more things to include! Vocab cards, art projects (or photos of 3D things that won't fit here), Venn diagrams, comprehension question answers, test/quizzes, etc.
Sometimes the kids will make something in the course of literature studies that they're super proud of and want to be displayed in the kitchen (I have a clothesline strung up on the wall where we can hang art.) When we're done admiring it, it gets glued onto the correct page along with every other assignment.
Sometimes full page worksheets get glued in as is (see below), which works well because the construction paper (9X12) is larger than regular computer paper (8.5X11). But often, in order to fit things better, papers get folded in half or smaller before being glued in (like the "Wisconsin" and "Similes/Metaphors" pages Secundus has on the page above.) It's also kind of fun to unfold and expand things to read them when we're looking back at everything later.
Do you have a method that you love for displaying/storing completed literature activities?
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