My family had the privilege of trying Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany Lapbook from the Apologia Elementary titles at the Apologia Curriculum page from A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.
A Journey Through Learning is a company owned by Paula Winget and Nancy Fileccia that creates fun educational lapbooks, copywork, unit studies, and notebooking for homeschool. You can find all kinds of different topical lapbooks on their website including: science, history, math, Bible, holidays seasons, preschool, and more! They also have curriculum lapbooks such as: Jay Wile Science, Apologia Exploring Creation Science, Classical Conversations, TruthQuest History, A History of Us, and others! A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks were voted best every year since 2011!
Lapbooks are basically scrapbooking for any educational topic that you can think of. They have fun flaps, pockets, pictures, pull outs, etc. that are glued to file folders to have information at a glance right at your fingertips that fits in your lap...hence the name, "lapbooks". You could think of them as better, smaller versions of poster boards for say a report on a certain subject. They help your student have a tactile/kinesthetic & visual way of learning the information so it better sticks in the memory.
A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks are easy to put together. They are available in your choice of instant download, CD, or already printed format. You will need a few items to get you started: Printed copy of the A Journey Through Learning Lapbook, different colored file folders/cardstock (how many and how to fold them are specified), scissors, glue, hole punch, brads, stapler, crayons or colored pencils, and if you are doing an Apologia Science Lapbook, the required textbook to go with it. These lapbooks come with templates, topical information they call "study guides", and all the instructions you need to put everything together. Unlike other lapbooks their directions and placement key are on the SAME page as the mini-booklet to make it less confusing.
Apologia Exploring Creation Science Lapbooks from A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks utilize Exploring Creation Science books from Apologia to create a fun way of learning the material. These come in Fun Size (3 folder lapbook) and Serious Size (12-14 folder lapbook). The Serious Size lapbooks are available in both color and black & white (so that your child can color the graphics). These come with an answer key to all the questions on the mini-booklets (except the open ended ones) so you don't have to search for the answers in the book. Each mini-booklet page has directions at the top for construction of each mini-booklet, pages to read out of the book in bold text, what your student should record after reading to show learning, and a small key to show where the mini-booklets are glued to the lapbook folders. For Serious Size lapbooks you will also need duct tape and a three-ring binder for lapbook storage. Besides the answer key these also come with additional reading suggestions for each lesson and enrichment pages that your student can explore for the back of the binder.
The Exploring Creation with Botany Learning Lapbook™ by A Journey Through Learning is a very thorough PDF that helps teach lessons 1-12 from the Exploring Creation with Botany book (part of the Young Explorers Series) by Jeannie Fulbright in a hands-on and visual way. This has 98 total pages, 84 of those to print for completing the lapbook itself. This is split up into 4 units: Lessons 1-3, Lessons 4-6, Lessons 7-9 and Lessons 10-12. This is recommended for grades 2-7. In it you get step-by-step directions to construct a lapbook using 8 folders that will teach your student all about Botany in a more interesting way than just the textbook and workbook alone.
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| Teela working on the Botany Lapbook. |
How We Used This and Our Thoughts:
My daughter Teela is going into 4th grade this year. We have been doing nature walks all summer and learning about plants and flowers. I wanted to teach her Botany so I purchased the Apologia Young Explorers Series Exploring Creation with Botany book and the Apologia Jr. Botany Notebooking Journal for her to do this year for part of her studies. This textbook is recommended for grades K-6. I then got the chance to try out the downloadable product of the Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany Learning Lapbook™ by A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks. We are glad we purchased the Apologia Exploring Creation science textbook because you need this to make use of the Apologia Science Lapbooks that go with them.
We went with printing the pages for the lapbook out in black & white because it is less work for my printer and Teela loves coloring. These pages were very straightforward and easy to follow. The mini-booklets went together easily and each page told where to glue them on the folder. I did have a bit of trouble knowing which was supposed to be back and which was front on the folder when I was helping place the mini-booklets on. So maybe in the future they could maybe address this.
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| One of the folders of the Botany lapbook we did together. |
All in all I think that the A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks Apologia Science Botany Lapbook was a lot of fun and Teela seemed to enjoy putting it together as she read the textbook. I liked that they told her which pages to read in the book to correspond with the parts in the lapbook she was making. These lesson plans were a great help.
I highly recommend these lapbooks to any homeschooler that is already using Apologia science books or wants to. We liked them a lot and they were very educational as well as engaging. We would love to do the Astronomy one next.
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