You will probably notice that as a family we do a lot of lapbooks, there are a number of reasons for this but the primary one is to put into practice what they have already learnt and to bring in new concepts for them to think about.
What I mean by this is that the style of Lapbooks we currently do, in themselves do not teach the twins much at all, it just gives us a focus on doing something together as a family unit and for me to see where they are up to in their learning journey.
I choose activities for the lapbooks that give me an idea of what they like doing, what they know and also a chance to bring up discussions and curiosity about things they don't know.
For instance the last Lapbook we did was the Olympic games Lapbook, all around them they will have noticed the Olympic games and they are already aware of sports but it is an ideal time to bring in the notion of different times and history by bringing into the lapbook the notion of gods, this serves a few purposes in the fact that both of the twins are working out what is real and what is not real.
The superheroes they see daily are a normality for them but they are coming to the realisation of real and not real, so covering the Olympic Gods and Olympus and watching the film about the gods gives them more of a concept of what is real and not real, you can see these theories working over a few days as today Louby pointed out that father xmas is not real whilst Oliver disagreed with her because of seeing Santa on the Santa train.
Louby already has a firmer grasp of what is real and what is not real than Oliver does.
Touching on the Olympic Gods in the Lapbook in various ways also introduces them to the subject of Greek Mythology as a subject.which was my sneaky way of introducing a subject that I would like them to eventually get interested in.
To me Greek Mythology plays a very important part in our word today and I think the twins will do well to know something of the Ancient Greek mythology.
The number and letter games work for me in the lapbook as a kind of test, to see how they are coping and coming along, as neither of the twins do any formal work during the week on Maths and English apart from their own little world and on the computer under their own steam, it gives me a little look at how they are coping with the subjects of maths and English without it seeming like a pressured thing to do for them.
The map idea was really focusing on what they have learnt about the world around us and how far they have come on understanding our Globe and the notion of different countries which we have focused on with other lapbooks and activities, this reassured me that they are understanding that each country has a flag and they are learning the concept of countries.
I could go on but as you can see the lapbooks really are a focus for me to reassure myself and bring in concepts for me.
The next lapbook will focus on Dental Health, they already know about dental health and what is good and not good to eat for the benefit of the teeth and how to take care of them, and they are regular dentists goers so this will all just be brought together in one place covering a few aspects of their learning journey bringing in some concept of science.
Science is something we haven't really touched on as far as experiments go and seeing science in action will be a new thing for them, so this will be brought in through the lapbook.
So lapbooks for me are more of a consolidation tool on their learning for me more than them, it gives me a chance to assess what they are learning.
When you are home educating it is hard to see sometimes what is actually being learnt, sometimes you think nothing is being done and forget kids are like sponges and suddenly surprise you with something you had no idea they had learnt.
An interesting article I recently read (which you can find here) confirmed my theory of their brains are like sponges, so I think just touching on subjects that they are not really ready for in a very basic way that they will hardly notice, will cement their learning later on in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment