Throughout time, inventions have shaped society. Can you imagine what life would be like without electricity? Or refrigerators? I’m pretty thankful for the men and women who have dared to see what was possible even when those around them may have thought they were crazy! We’ve been studying some of these inventors lately with The Greatest Inventors from A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks.
What’s a Lapbook?
Lapbooks are often compared to scrapbooks for learning. They allows students to compile their best pieces of work for a unit and assemble them into file folders arranged into a presentation board of sorts. But, unlike a traditional presentation board, you can hold these in your lap!
Here’s a look at our lapbook, ready for mini-books to be attached:
What’s Included?
The Greatest Inventors is a 67 page downloadable product, designed to be used with 2nd-8th graders. The first few pages provide clear directions for assembling the lapbook, the mini-books, and ideas for storing lapbooks. A key explains where each piece goes on the lapbook.
A cover for the lapbook provides space for students to design their own invention. This was a favorite for a couple of my kiddos!
For each inventor studied, a study guide is included. This includes plenty of information to complete the activities. Older students may enjoy doing additional research, to really dive into learning about the inventors. After the study guide, there’s a mini-book for each inventor. These completed mini-books are glued onto the lapbook to document learning.
How We Used It
A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks recommends printing a color copy of the lapbook. But, we don’t have a color printer. A black and white copy seemed to work for most pages. Some were a little hard to see, when the picture was detailed.
The reading and writing was a bit out of level for my younger learners. We’re still working on building confidence in those subjects. So I read aloud the information from the study guide and had them complete the mini-book. I had the kids either write a couple of words in the mini-books, or draw pictures, depending on the topic.
As we learned, we talked about how inventions have changed the world. We did some brainstorming and dreaming of our own, and did some tinkering with stuff from around the farm.
Jeffrey enjoyed learning more about John Deere.
What I Thought
I wasn’t a fan of the color throughout. It’d be nice if a black/white version were included because I know I’m not the only one without a color printer. Besides, my kids really enjoy coloring, so they could have easily colored everything on their own.
I thought the reading level was a bit high for a second grader, mainly because of the people and place names throughout. When you combine the vocabulary with the scientific topics, it’s a tough read for younger students.
However, the information included was interesting. The kids found it engaging, and enjoyed completing the projects. Many great inventors, from a nice variety of industries, comprise the study.
We’ve enjoyed creating the mini-books, learning more about inventors who made our way of life possible, and are looking forward to assembling the lapbook when we’re done with each of the sections. A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks has plenty of other lapbooks available as well. Since we’re using Apologia for science, the Apologia themed ones caught my eye.
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