Katy No-Pocket Lapbook

I discovered lapbooking a couple of years ago and immediately fell in love with the idea.  Luckily, the boys enjoy it too. *grin*  We've made 8 or 9 of them at this point (they're a lot of work, especially since I tend to get caught up in details . . .).  I'm finding that they work really well for science topics and Five in a Row-type book studies/activities.  They'd probably be good for history too, which we might try at some point.  Connor has done lapbooks on insects, turkeys, tornadoes, Noah's Ark, and he just finished one on snakes, which I'll be posting soon.  I've done lapbooks on obedience and Christmas with both boys, and Brennan just finished his lapbook on Katy No-Pocket, which was the second lapbook we've done that was ALL his.

Katy No-Pocket is a sweet children's book by Emmy Payne (illustrated by H. A. Rey, who also illustrated the Curious George books).  Katy, a mother kangaroo, has no pocket to carry her baby.  After trying to imitate the ways other animals carry their babies, Katy goes to the city to see if she can find a pocket.  A man generously gives her his apron full of pockets, and Katy happily hops home carrying her baby.  Here's our lapbook!

Front cover

Back cover: an imitation of Australian Aboriginal dot art found at DLTK.

Inside, with "apron flap" closed

A mini book about Australia, including a map and flag to color and pictures of animals unique to Australia.

Flap book: How animals move.  On each flap is a way that animals move, and he listed animals that fell into each category.  For the next week or so, he'd come up with a new one out of the blue and we'd have to go write it in: "Oh!! Mommy!!!  Giraffes walk!  We need to write that in the lapbook!!"  (Yes, all the exclamation points are necessary for an accurate quote!)

Each pocket has several cards.  For the top pocket, he told me things he'd put in a pocket if he had one.  For the bottom pocket, I wrote a profession on each card and he told me something that a person in that profession would have in his/her pocket (i.e., he said that a doctor would have medicine in his pocket).

The apron with real pockets took forever to make (remember what I said about getting caught up in details?), but I think it was worth it.  In one pocket are matching cards for animals and their habitats from Kizclub, another pocket has story sequence cards, and the bottom two have tool matching/memory cards (the man who gives Katy the apron dumps tools out of his pockets before giving it to her).

View with the apron page opened.  The yellow item is the result of random cutting and gluing he did one day that happened to look like a kangaroo.  When I pointed this out, he added a tail (the bump on the right) and wanted to put it in the lapbook.

Animal Families trifold book from Homeschool Share

"K is for . . ." letter K tracing book

"What do you see in the country?/What do you see in the city?" flap book.  I printed and cut pictures for each category and he sorted and glued them under the appropriate flaps.

Kangaroo maze printed from . . . somewhere!

"All About Kangaroos" shape book.  I was so impressed by how much he remembered and could tell me after reading a book about kangaroos!

"What does the Bible say about sharing?" circle book with 1 Timothy 6:18.  He drew a picture of Connor sharing a snack with him.  I thought it was interesting that he was the one being shared with instead of the one doing the sharing!

The pictures of kangaroos throughout the lapbook are ones we found online and printed onto address labels and then cut out.  I also meant to include a mini book on the other books we read related to kangaroos while we worked on the lapbook, but I totally forgot until just now.  These are some of them:

Pouch by David Ezra Stein

Heart in the Pocket by Laurence Bourguignon

Polly Hopper's Pouch by Louise Bonnett-Rampersaud

Outside and Inside Kangaroos by Sandra Markle

He had a lot of fun making his OWN lapbook, and I was really impressed with how much he remembered.  We're getting ready to learn about farms, and I'm planning to have them each do their own lapbook as we go (some of the things will be the same in both).  I really think as we continue Brennan's preschool "career" that lapbooking will be a big part of what we do (in addition to phonics and math).  It's fun, it's manageable chunks that I can easily fit in between doing things with Connor, and we can tailor it to what he's interested in learning about.  Now to go renew our library books about farms . . .