Literacy Lapbook, About Me

This is a short, simple lapbook designed to encourage early writing. My daughter is at the beginning of learning to write sentences independently and in this project I asked her to write without copying. She wrote out a draft version first, so the final version you see here has been corrected and rewritten.

The first section we made was this flip flap book, containing one simple sentence under each flap. My daughter had to think up the sentences she would write about herself.

Inside this heart shape I asked my daughter to write about things she likes. Simple as that! She wrote, “I like rabbits, I like to play in the snow and I like pink.”

For this “I am a Muslim” section I used cut outs from an Islamic studies workbook. I wanted to include information which relates to a young child’s understanding of what it means to be a Muslim.

Continuing with the same simple idea we made simple greetings card style folds and my daughter wrote a few sentences to describe her home and then her bedroom.

For this layer style book we did some measuring and weighing! Practising writing numbers and units of measure such as cm and kg.

We also made a section on “My Family”, using a family tree style diagram. To avoid drawing pictures of family members I asked my daughter to draw pictures of things to represent each person, for example she drew footballs and cricket bats to represent her brothers and a pile of books to represent her little sister.

For more ideas on how to make various booklets for a lapbook, including the layer style book, enter “lapbook lessons” in the You Tube search box, which leads you to lots of tutorials on how to fold different books.

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Prophet Yusuf (as) Lapbook

This is a lapbook I made with my sons last year, when they were aged 9.

After we had read through the story of Yusuf (as) we selected the following areas for the lapbook:

Layer book on Yusuf’s (as) family, (Ishaq (as), Ibrahim (as), Yaqub (as), Binyamin and the ten half brothers. We simply described the relationship between these family members.

Map of Canaan and Egypt in the time of Yusuf (as). We drew this map from “Atlas of Quran” (published by Darussalam). It shows the lands where Yusuf (as) lived.

Binjamin and the Golden Cup. Writing about this part of the story in a cup shape book.

Yusuf (as)’s garments. Writing about the blood stained shirt, and the shirt which Yaqub (as) placed on his face and his eyesight was returned.

The Well. Writing about the throwing of Yusuf (as) into the well, and what happened next.

Dreams. Here we used an envelope style fold, forming four sections. The four dreams (Yusuf’s childhood dream, the King’s dream, the cupbearer’s dream and the baker’s dream) were each written about in their own section.

Yusuf  (as) in Egypt. Brief, point style notes on the events in Egypt. (Link takes you to the beginning of this only.)

In the “bubbles” on the lower left of the lapbook there is writing about lessons which can be learned from the story of Yusuf (as). (Always obey Allah, patience, forgiveness, hardship is followed by ease for the believers).

 

The story of Yusuf (as) is long and detailed. In this lapbook we focussed in on certain aspects of the history, not expecting to be able to cover everything. There is still lots of writing in this lapbook!

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Names Of Allah colourwheel display

This week I thought I should take a break from the lapbook projects and share something different.

I hope that you can see past the rather old and faded look of the piece of work above and see the great idea underneath!

A friend of mine originally did this project a few years ago with her daughters, the piece of work above was made by one of my sons a couple of years later. The idea is based on the artists colour wheel (scroll down a little to see the graphic). More information on the colour wheel can  be found here and here.

The colour wheel displays cool and warm colours as opposites of each other. Using paints or other art materials you begin by making a colour wheel, then on each pair of opposite colours names of Allah with opposite meanings are written. In the example above the segments were cut out individually and stuck back into a circle. This was because the children were young. With older children, who can paint neatly within the lines, a neater result could be obtained from not cutting out the segments. Here the names were written in Arabic, with English meanings. Finally the wheel was framed with thick card, and decorated.

The pairs of names used in this project were:

Al-Awwal, The First;   Al-Akhir, The Last

Al-Mu’izz, The Giver of Honour;  Al-Mudhill, The Giver of Disgrace

Al-Muhiyy, The Giver of Life;   Al-Mumit, The Giver of Death

Ar-Rafi’, The Exalter;   Al-Khafiz, The Abaser

Al-Mubdi, The Originator;  Al-Mu’id, The Restorer

Al-Basit, The Expander; Al-Qabiz, the Seizer.

There are other pairs you could use if you prefer, for example, Al-Mu’ti, The Giver;  Al-Mani’, The Withholder

Edited to add:

Umm K had this idea for a Names of Allah wheel:

Here the wheel is made from a disc of card placed inside a “holder” made of two other discs of card. The inner disc has a selection of Allah’s names witten on coloured paper around its outer edge. The outer holder has an opening which allows different names to come into view as the wheel is turned, inshAllah. To allow it to turn the inner disc has a plastic drinking straw threaded through its centre. The idea behind this was to make something that a child would like to handle, so that she would turn the wheel and thereby keep rereading and being reminded of the Names, inshAllah.

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Prophet Ibraheem (as) Lapbook

This lapbook was made by a friend and her six year old daughter. I’m calling it a lapbook, although the format of the presentation is not the usual lapbook style, instead sheets of card have been threaded together,accordian style, as illustrated in the picture below.

 

This lapbook was made around the time of Eid-Ul-Adha, inside there are links made between the life of Ibraheen (as) and the Hajj.

The photo above shows an overview of the lapbook contents when the book is opened and laid flat. The full story of Ibraheen (as) is very long and detailed, this project looks at a few key aspects, suitable for a younger learner.

The first page (above) features sections on the Ibraheem (as) asking “Who is my Lord?”, the breaking of the idols, and the fire into which Ibraheen (as) was thrown.

In the blue inset is a booklet about the story of Hajar, the wife of Ibraheen (as), and the spring of Zam Zam. The cut out is shaped as the hills of Safa and Marwa.

Underneath this section, on the orange card is a picture of the three jamaraat, and some writing relating to why they are there.

On the final page (red card), at the top there is a cotton wool sheep with some writing about the sacrifice of Ismail (as), and below that there is a pop up fold about Eid-ul-Adha, linking the two.

This project was made around the time of Eid-ul-Adha, as a background to understanding that festival. For an older child this project could be further developed by including more incidents from the life of Ibraheem (as), such as the building of the Kabah and the birth of his son Ishaaq (as). Also the links between the story and the rituals of Hajj could be gone into in more depth.

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Tiger and Animal Facts Lapbook

This lapbook is an excellent example of how flexible a lapbook project can be. It can start with an interest in one area, and branch out to include lots of related information, but still form one coherent project when complete.

This lapbook project was done by a friend’s five year old son, because he wanted to do something about tigers. On the way he found out lots of other things too.

First the tiger information. The colouring page was taken from Enchanted Learning.

The questions are printed on card, with answers underneath.

With younger learners especially the lapbook project can include plenty of fun elements, like these puzzles.

 On the right of the book there is a section on animals and their babies, using thumbnail images with labels for the adult and young of various animals.

In the section above flaps with headings such as “classification”, “diets”, “habitats” can be lifted to reveal more tiger information.

For the final section of this project cut outs of different types of animals have been collected into pockets, so that “omnivores”, “solitary animals”and so on are collected together. The sister whose son worked on this project can’t remember where the images she used came from, but I would suggest that a similar effect could be achieved by using animal pictures collected from clipart sites, colouring pages etc, sorting them and labelling the actual pockets with “animals with stripes”, “herd animals” and so on. A few facts could be written on the back of the pictures. These links could be useful for this:

Animal Classification project

Classifying and sorting fun

Does the back cover of a lapbook sometimes seem to get wasted? Here good use has been made of the back cover! Tiger stripes have been coloured onto the orange paper, which has then been attached to card and stapled to make a strong pocket. Inside there is a printed out and coloured in early reading book from www.readinga-z.com, with a tiger theme of course!

Links

The following links could be useful for making a project similar to this one:

World Wild Life – Tigers

Kids for Tigers (name suggests site is aimed at tigers, to educate them about kids, but the reverse is true, it has some good activities)

Kids National Geographic

Animal printables

More animal pictures

Animal Classes

Just collect a varity of cut-outs and printouts from these sources, copy down the facts that are most interesting, stick it all together, and you have made a fun lapbook!

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