A Journey Through Learning Lap-Book/Unit Study

Over three years ago (Fall of 2009... WOW! Where does the time go?)  I reviewed an autumn lapbook from A Journey Through Learning, which I completed with my middlest (When he was 9).  This year A Journey Through Learning gave members of the TOS Review Crew the opportunity to review their choice of lapbook from the following options:

• Letters, Numbers and Shapes (ages 3-5)
• The Earth (grades 1-4)
• Knights and Castles (grades 2-7)
• Astronomy and Space (grades 2-7) 

Because Middlest has enough on his plate at the moment, I decided to do a little work with my youngest. He is beyond the preschool option offered, so we went with The Earth, which was a little bit above his level, but definitely of interest to him. 

screenshot of an info page

The pdf download incorporates a study guide with information that can be read directly to the older child (you can have them read it directly depending on age), or you can use it as a guide to modify the information for your younger learner. 

screenshot of a page element

The pages to print include directions for each element, as well as placement instructions, which is nice! 

about the Earth

Youngest was very excited to be doing Science, and made me realize that I need to do a little more. He also thought it was cool that we had all of these little books to put together that would help him remember what he learned. Most of the time I took dictation, but as you can see by the very fancy "EARTH" he wanted to be involved a little bit. :)

He really enjoyed talking about the makeup of the earth, and various rock formations. I had to laugh because we ended up referring to Minecraft during those conversations~ since he's often "mining" for iron, the fact that the Earth's core is made of iron and nickle was very interesting to him. We also talked about obsidian being an igneous rock and not made in  a reactor ala Minecraft.

Another conversation about igneous rock included the example of melting sugar (A crystal) into a liquid, and then letting it harden. We discussed how igneous rocks can be of different hardness depending on how hot the liquid rock was, and how it cooled etc. . . I  tied it into candy-making this Christmas, when I heated up sugar (and other ingredients of course) to make caramels that were soft and chewy, and then heated up some of the remaining liquid to a higher temperature to make a more toffee-like candy. If I had heated it even higher, we would have had a very hard candy. Fun stuff! 

He was already familiar with the concept that rocks are made of minerals because we had recently (before starting this lapbook) watched the Reading Rainbow episode that includes "The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth," which covered that concept rather well.

One other fun coincidence... when we were done talking about the various forms of rocks, I went off to do something else, and Littlest decided to settle down with "Eyewitness Living Earth" (Nice coffee-table book)which was hanging around the living room. I had hardly been out of the room for one minute when he called me back to see the page he had turned to... it just happened to be one on "The Changing Earth" which included photos of all three types of rocks, as well as descriptions of moving plates, etc... Totally unplanned! Nice little confirmation for him that God is interested in the smallest details of our lives, including what we are learning about each day. :) 


What I Liked:

• Super Easy to use~ Information AND graphics are at your fingertips
• Each "graphic booklet" element page followed the relevant information page~ I really liked that organization, instead of having all the information first, and having to hunt for each element that related to what we talking about.

What I didn't like:

• A bit of a catch 22 here... I tend to be fairly frugal with my paper, so I felt that some of the Graphic pages were a little  wasteful of my paper (Especially when I chose to print on colored paper for variation). Some of them could have been set up to print using only 1/2 the page, and then be flipped over to print the other 1/2. However, I would then lose the aforementioned ease and simplicity... not precisely a "Con" but possibly worth pointing out? Efficiency vs Economy ...  ???

Really... that was the only thing that I didn't care for, so not really a big deal! 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: A Journey Through Learning
• Product: The Earth Lapbook
• Ages: (grades 1-4)
• Price: $13 for instant download

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say about this or one of the other options we received. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~