When my older son had just turned 3 years old, we spent a week doing
activities related to the book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", by Laura
Numeroff. The activities were based on a book by Dinah Zike called, "The
Big Book of Books and Activities", which gives instructions for making many
different books with a variety of information. We combined these books into
a shutter-folded manila folder which is called a lapbook. The lapbook
serves as a lasting reminder of what he learned. Although the book we read
was a library book, my son can go back to this lapbook and relate the story
from memory. Lapbooking is a great teaching tool for all ages! It's very
inexpensive, too, as it only requires basic office supplies to complete.
(You can visit
www.Dinah.com for more information on Dinah Zike and to learn
about her other publications.)
Here is our journal for that week:
Monday: I read the book to Benjamin while he colored a picture from the
book. I attempted to get him to color the areas of the picture in the same
colors as the illustration in the book. He did a pretty good job once I
pointed out what the picture in the book looks like. He got a little
black-happy at the end, so it's an interesting artistic interpretation of
what he saw. This picture will probably be included in our lapbook in some
way. (Item 1 on pictures below.)
Next, we talked about the cookies being circle shaped. We went through the
book again and I had him find all of the circles he could see. I didn't
realize how many there were. I wrote them all down so we can include that in
our lapbook at the end of the week. (Item 2) We then went back and I had him
count circles in some areas: holes in the cleanser can, flowers, etc. He
really enjoyed the circle activity and continued on to tell me that his Ritz
Bits crackers are circles and they have circle holes on top. He seems to
have circles down pat.
Tuesday: Today we had "Be A Mouse Day". I made some (very basic) mouse ears
for him to wear. We went through the book and Benjamin did the things that
the mouse did (minus the hair trim). He had a cookie, drank milk, used a
napkin, cleaned the mess, rested, colored, taped his picture to the
refrigerator, had more milk & a cookie to go with it. He enjoyed being a
mouse. Who wouldn't with all those cookies? I took pictures of each activity
to include in our lapbook. It only took us about 1/2 hour to do everything,
although he could have spent more time on the coloring. He was anxious to
use the "sticky tape", so coloring didn't last as long as it normally does.
He insisted on laying on the floor to color (like in the book) instead of in
his usual place, which I thought was a good observation on his part. (Item
3)
Wednesday: The first thing we did was "napkin" folding. A real napkin would
probably be too hard for Benjamin to fold, so we used square pieces of paper
instead. First we folded a milk cup (that we could actually drink out of,
but we didn't). Then we folded and colored a mouse. A
very very primitive mouse. :-) He did pretty good pressing down the folds
after I got them started for him. I wrote the word "MILK" on mine, so he
wanted to write it on his, too. I helped him to write it out and he seems to
be doing very well with his 'pencil grip'. The mouse fits inside the cup and
will become a part of our lapbook. (Item 4)
Then we wrote a story called, "If You Give Benjamin a Ball." This was really
too advanced for him (as I thought it might be) so I had to prompt him a
lot, but he did come up with a couple of things without my help. He often
rattles off stories on his own, but he was having some difficulty focusing
on that today. We'll turn this into a small book to add to our lapbook.
(Item 5) When
we were done, he wanted to go and do everything we had said he would do in
the story. This included an impromptu class on how to do jumping jacks, so
we actually got a very small bit of Phys. Ed. thrown in. I never would have
thought to plan that (P.E. was never my thing), so it was a nice bonus. The
story must have made an impact because he was able to recite the whole thing
back to Daddy later that night.
Thursday: Today we learned about mice using a simple printout from the
internet. I read the worksheet to Benjamin and we talked about what mice
look like, how they live, what they eat and what eats them. Benjamin was
particularly interested in the fact that mice don't have hair on their ears.
He colored the picture of the mouse on the printout and we made a little
booklet describing the attributes of mice. Benjamin then sorted pictures of
things that eat mice and things that are eaten by mice and we glued these
onto the corresponding pages in our booklet. (Item 6)
Since he was really enjoying the glueing, I went ahead and had him help me
assemble the story book we wrote yesterday, "If You Give Benjamin a Ball." I
had printed out pictures to go with it, so he glued them on the correct
pages (with a little help). (Item 5) I'm starting to wonder if all of our
activities will fit into the lapbook. It's probably a good thing we're a
little ahead of my original schedule and can devote tomorrow to getting that
put together.
Friday: Today we just did a lot of cutting and pasting for our lapbook. I
had started on the harder items yesterday and Benjamin helped me finish up
the gluing of the smaller items. He drew some circles on the circle book,
which he did really well, but then he colored over them all and they're no
longer recognizable as circles. :-) He really likes the lapbook, especially
the story wheel (Item 7), which he saw for the first time today. I've added
pictures of our lapbook below.
I encourage everyone to try this approach. It's a great hands-on way to
gather a variety of information and pull it all together into a cohesive
project that you can go back to time and again.
Jodi Whisler lives in Iowa with her husband and 2 young boys. Please take the time visit her wonderful website, www.HomeGrownHearts.com for links, worksheets, her online homeschool journal, and more!
