Design Your Own! Part 4 of 5 in Homeschool Share’s Lapbooking Series

Over the last few months we have been sharing a Five Part Series dedicated to lapbooks. So far we’ve shared:

 to help y’all assemble your own lapbooking kits.

to give you the best of the best in Free and Retail lapbooks

demonstrating how we assemble a lapbook.

Sometimes, in spite of the numerous lapbooks available, you just can’t find the lapbook you are looking for. So may we now present…

 

I have found that the easiest way to structure a lapbook is to find a well rounded, informative, and fun book for a spine. I’ll be using the picture book One Grain of Rice by Demi to demonstrate how I design a lapbook.

Step 1: Take Notes

The first thing I do is read through the book and make notes about topics I would like to include in a lapbook. I look for topics across the curriculum, my goal being to have at least 10 lapbook components. My list for One Grain of Rice looks like this:

 Step 2: See what’s available

After I note what topics I want to cover, I do a quick search on Homeschool Share to see what’s already available. No sense in trying to reinvent the wheel! For my lapbook for One Grain of Rice I found an India Map Shutterfold and India Flag Simple Fold on the Asia Resources Page, as well as a FREE India Lapbook that I can glean components from.  There are also assorted Free Animal Lapbooks I can peruse for the fauna of India, as child’s interest warrants.

Step 3: Clipart

I then download clipart to use on the lapbook components, as well as to decorate the lapbook. There are many sites that provide clipart. Here is a list of Free Clipart Image Providers from the Homeschool Share Forum. Because I want to make sure my lapbooks are sharable on Homeschool Share, it is important that I only use copyright free images.

 Step 4: Choosing Components

As I look at my notes, I determine what component will be best suited for each topic. How many pieces of information will be included? How much writing space will be needed? Will it have clipart? If so, is the clipart best suited for a horizontal or vertical component? I scan through the free templates at Homeschool Share and choose a template style for each topic I want to include in the lapbook. My notes then look like this:

 

Step 5: Designing Components

There are a few ways you can make your components. I will demonstrate 3 different methods.

 Lapbook Templates You Can Type On

Ami, our Homeschool Share matriarch, has made all of our lapbooking lives easier, by providing to anyone who subscribes to this blog a wonderful set of over a hundred pages of Lapbook Templates You Can Type On! This is the simplest, no muss, no fuss way to design your own lapbook. Simply find a component you like, type your words of choice in the blue boxes, and print. The disadvantages are that you can’t get creative with fonts or colors, and will need to glue or draw on your own clipart. But when simplicity needs to win out, this is the best way to go!  I used this method for the following components:

Lapbook Templates You Can Type On with a Twist

If you take an extra couple of steps, you can add your own text and clipart to the components Ami made.

1. First, use the snapshot tool at the top (little picture of a camera) to drag and copy the component you want to use.
2. Next, paste this into a Word document.  You can adjust the size a bit if desired.
3. Now, to add text, click on insert – text box – draw text box and drag the box where you want to add text. Do this as many times as you need to add text to the different parts of the component.
4. Finally, to add clipart, click on insert – picture, and find the clipart you want to paste. Once pasted, click on the picture, select “bring to front” under picture tools, and move it and size it as you desire.
5. Add brief instructions on how to complete component.
6. If component is to be shared, appropriate copyright info should be in place.

I used this method to create these components:

Making Templates in Word

I use Microsoft Word to make most of my lapbook components. I use the tables, word art, text box, and shapes tools. You can reverse engineer components that you’ve seen, tweak a design to fit your needs, or create an entirely new design. I’ll start out with a simple design, a horizontal simple fold.

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Click on “insert” then “table” and choose a table with 2 rows and 1 column.
3. Right click on the table, click on “table properties” and choose column and row size.  (I’m making a 5” x 4” book when closed)
4. I use dotted lines to identify where the components need to be folded. To do this, click on the table, right click and choose “table properties”, then “borders and shading”, then “borders”, and replace the solid center line with a dotted.
5. Next, insert clip art. Click in the bottom row (for a book that opens up) and click on “insert”, then “picture”.  After picture is inserted into the table, use “picture tools” to format.
6. To add text, click on “insert”, then “text box”, then “draw text box”, and then drag the text box where you want. Then type the text in the font, size, and color you want.
7. Add brief instructions on how to cut, fold, and complete component.
8. If component is to be shared, appropriate copyright info should be in place.

If you want your text to be fancy, or to be able to angle it at any direction, you’ll need to use the Word Art tool. With the following component, a Doubling Quarterfold, I will demonstrate how.

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Follow the steps above to insert your table, clipart, and/or text.
3. To make fancy text using the Word Art tool, click on “insert” then “Word Art” and select a style you like.  A box will pop up so you can choose your font and size, and type in the text you want.
4. Right click on your Word Art text,  click “format Word Art”, then “layout” then “in front of text” then “ok”. You will now be able to stretch, skew, rotate, and angle your Word Art, and move it where you want on the document.
5. To change text color, right click over your Word Art, click “format Word Art” then “colors and lines” and choose what line and fill colors you want. Then click “ok”.
6. Add brief instructions on how to cut, fold, and complete component.
7. If component is to be shared, appropriate copyright info should be in place.

To make the following component, I used the steps for “Lapbook Templates You Can Type On with a Twist” and also added Word Art as instructed above.

 

You can use the Shapes tool in Word to make shape books, or to spice up accordions or simple folds. The following instructions describe how I make a rounded rectangle accordion fold.

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Click on “insert” then “shapes” then select the shape you want.
3. Right click on shape, and then change the size as desired. I also like to choose the horizontal alignment layout as “center” to make sure all my folds are lined up.
4. Copy and paste as many pages as you want in your accordion. For an accordion fold to work, it must be an odd number of pages, like this:

5. To insert dotted lines (as fold indicators), I click on “insert” then “shapes” then choose the line. Right click on the line, then “format auto shape” then “colors and lines” and choose white, dash, 2pt. I place this line everywhere I want a fold, like this:

6. Now I follow the steps above to add text and/or clipart.

7. Add brief instructions on how to cut, fold, and complete component.

8. If component is to be shared, appropriate copyright info should be in place.

We are almost there! Another example, a side by side book with a header.

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Click on “insert” then “table” and choose a table with 4 rows and 3 columns.

3. Right click on the table, click on “table properties” and choose column and row size.  (I’m making 2 – 2”x2” flaps and a .75” header)

4. I now need to make some lines disappear and others dotted to identify where the components need to be folded. To do this, click on the table, right click and choose “table properties”, then “borders and shading”, then “borders”, and remove unwanted lines, and replace fold lines with dotted.

5. The header needed to be flipped, so I used Word Art tool as described above. The other text was typed into table boxes.

6. Add brief instructions on how to cut, fold, and complete component.7. If component is to be shared, appropriate copyright info should be in place.

One last one and we are done! The last component to make is the Rice Layered Book. I’ll do this one in Word too.

1. Open a new Word document.

2. I will use a table to make 4 graduated layer pages. Click on “insert” then “table” and choose a table with 9 rows and 2 columns.

 3. Right click on the table, click on “table properties” and choose column and row size.  (making the rows all .75” will allow me to divide the rows into pages, and the columns are 3” wide)

4. I now need to make some lines disappear. To do this, click on the table, right click and choose “table properties”, then “borders and shading”, then “borders”, and remove unwanted lines.

5. Next, insert clip art. Click on the cover and click on “insert”, then “picture”.  After picture is inserted into the table, use “picture tools” to format.

6. I used Word Art tool as described above. The other text was typed into table boxes.

7. Add brief instructions on how to cut, fold, and complete component.

8. If component is to be shared, appropriate copyright info should be in place.

You can make components as fancy or simplistic as you like. Once you get comfortable using the tools in Word, you’ll be able to create all kinds of graduated books, tab books, accordion folds, etc.

Next time, we will share the final part of our Lapbooking Series and discuss what to do with lapbooks when they are done. To be sure not to miss, please subscribe at the link to the right.