It all started when Big Brother and I picked up The Great Shark Escape, a Magic School Bus chapter book, from a used book sale. And I could kick myself now for not buying the others that I saw! It's been a fun book to read-aloud. And I just love that within this story is factual information, too! It isn't some completely made up story, but we are learning some very interesting information about sharks! I then talked Big Brother into putting together a Shark Lapbook!!
Why Lapbook?
Lapbooks make learning fun; it's learning in disguise!
To get real simple here, Lapbooks are "books" that sit in your lap. Ha! No, really though Lapbooks are a really neat concept that allow your student to put together a small "portfolio" of what he/she learned on a particular topic. They are put together using a basic file folder so they are easy to store and can be brought out to share with others. Much love and care goes into each lapbook as there is a lot of cutting, gluing, pasting, and writing involved!
Lapbooks speak to my scrapbooking heart, and making one with my son was a great way to spend one-on-one time together! In the end, we made a neat keepsake project!
Shark Lapbook
A lapbook is broken up into different sections within the file. You could make a shark lapbook yourself and highlight main points from the books you have read, or you can use the free shark lapbook I found at Homeschool Share. We picked up some extra books from the library and we put together our own little unit!
Shark Lapbook Supplies
The Shark Lapbook gives directions on how to put it together and how to place your printable pieces, but make sure you have these supplies handy:
With the Shark Lapbook, we learned:
- What Sharks Eat
- Where Sharks Live
- Facts about Shark Teeth
- Graphed Shark Measurement
- Shark Vocabulary
- Water Safety
- Parts of a Shark
- ... and more!
After reading several books, I had Big Brother make an acrostic poem using the word, Shark. Here's what he came up with:
Smell blood
Have gills
Are fish
Rush (swims fast)
Killer
(enter music from "Jaws"...)
(enter music from "Jaws"...)
Inside our Shark Lapbook
I love this little flip book that allowed us to write about the other books we read! I also added a choice for Fiction/ Nonfiction to help Big Brother remember the differences between those types of books.
In the end, we learned a lot of facts about sharks-- more than I wanted to know ; )
SHARK Card Game
/ar/ Reading Game
To add in some language arts, we worked on the /ar/ sound as in "shark" and "car." I found blank fish and shark 'game' cards on a blog and then wrote words with the /ar/ sound on each fish. We took turns picking a fish out of the bag and reading the word. BUT, if we caught a shark, we had to throw our cards back in the bag!
If you are a Magic School Bus fan, I highly recommend the chapter book series! I'll have to keep my eye out for more when out and about...
This way kids don't even know they are learning! I love it!
ReplyDeleteJust popping over to say I've featured it this week:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.herecomethegirlsblog.com/2013/05/18/the-sunday-showcase-activities-for-boys.html
Thank you for the feature, Rebecca!! Love linking up to The Sunday Showcase!!
Delete