Making Mini Books

For many years I was very involved in rubber stamping and really enjoyed making the pop up cards, window cards, and all kinds of complicated folding cards. Although I was not into origami, I relished the idea of movement in the card. I am sure that is why I enjoy lapbooking so much. The folding and creating of these mini books is fascinating.

Every year when I get a fresh bunch of new third graders they are introduced to the world of lapbooks by making mini books. At first, they have a difficult time cutting, folding, and even pasting because they haven’t done it before. I do a lot of modeling, demonstrating each step in the process, so they can do the same step. Once they have made a couple of mini books, they feel like they are experts. It just takes a little time for them to experience the outcome. Once they see the finished product, they are amazed that they could do it.

The first picture is a hexagon petal mini book template. The students would cut out on the solid lines, and fold on the dotted lines. The second picture is a finished product of the hexagon petal mini book. After it has been cut and folded, the students now record.

Using Mini Books as an Assessment Tool

I am amazed at what the children write in the mini books. I use the mini books as ann overview or review of what we learned. After I teach the lesson, or we read from our science or social studies books, we launch the mini book of the day. We first cut, fold, and/or whatever needs to be done, then comes the fun stuff.

If there is a lot of vocabulary words in our study, we work with the vocabulary. If there was a lot of content, we work on organizing that content. Graphic organizers are great additions to lapbooks. The information you organize, can be directly organized in a mini book.

This venn diagram could be easily converted to a mini book by just folding in each side to the middle and opening up the shutters.

The following pictures are some mini books that have been completed by students. (I did not take pictures of my students’ lapbooks, silly me. So, I used a trusted google search to find these treasures.)

Aren’t these great?

The children can then color, decorate the books in any way so long as they don’t go overboard. The information they write is the important stuff. I can then assess what they have learned, or what I need to go over the next time.