Free Lapbook Ideas For Kids
Dinosaurs, Rainforests And Space

Find out what a lapbook is and get started with our free ideas to make your own on rainforests, space and dinosaurs.

Doing one of these activities isn't just about writing - you can add anything you like from coins and dinosaur photographs to seashells!

Lapbooks are great for helping kids learn about a topic in all sorts of different ways.

It suits kids who are visual learners and those who enjoy crafts because there's quite a lot cutting and sticking involved!

What Are Lap books?

You can use lap books as a way to bring together an activity by creating a series of mini books, with each booklet looking at a different part of the topic.

You can see our page on how to make lapbooks here to find out:

• What a lapbook is
• How to start
• Tips and Ideas
  

We've also picked out some fun homeschool ideas like Ocean Creatures, Airplanes and Zoos which work really well, particularly with younger kids.

Homeschool Ideas

When you're thinking of what your kids might enjoy, don't feel you have to put all your mini booklets in a file folder.

In our homeschool we had lots of fun covering our living room walls with our dinosaur and rainforest projects -  our children William and Catherine loved showing them off.

You can pick different formats to suit your kids. You could try a large poster sized sheet of cardstock like we did with our homeschool dinosaur topic or make one that's in a folder to open out.

Have fun choosing what suits your kids best!

And another useful thing is that you can adapt different subjects to different ages.

Another good idea is to use a story book as the basis for your activities. I've seen that done well with tales set in another country so you can include country facts and, if it's an animal story, drawings and facts about the main character!

Dinosaur Lapbook

How about making this fabulous dinosaur lapbook made by Laura and her son?

Laura gives some tips of what to put in your lapbook here:

1. Find a website like kidsdinosaurs.com with information about your child's favorite dinosaurs. Print - or get your child to help write out - their favorite dino facts and staple together to make a dino information booklet (see photo). Laura's son's booklet starts with T-Rex (of course!)
   
2. Use activites from the series Harry's Bucketful of Dinosaurs. Stick some of the pictures and speech bubbles into your lapbook (see photo.)
   
3. Photocopy pictures of dinosaurs and glue them on popsicle (lollipop) sticks. Make a pocket in your lapbook (see photo) and put them inside so your child can match the dinosaurs with the ones in the booklet.
4. Add some handwriting activites where your child writes out the names of the dinosaurs.

More Ideas For Your Dinosaur Lapbook

Our homeschool Dinosaurs project would make a perfect topic.

How about adding:

• Natural objects like lichen (pre-Cambrian), sponge (Cambrian) and coal (Carboniferous.)
• A timeline.
• Newspaper articles.
• An origami dinosaur.
• Photographs and post cards.
• Maps of the different periods from Wikipedia.

• Drawings and coloring pages.
• A freshly laid dinosaur egg made with marbling inks.
• Facts.
• Dinosaur stamps.
• Stuff from a real dinosaur Museum you've visited.
• Downloads from the internet.
• A plaster cast fossil.

If you look at our Dinosaur activities for kids you'll see that part of the fun of our dinosaur project was to add lots of paper fold-outs, tabs and pipe cleaners to our drawings.

That's a great idea for your dinosaur activities because it will make your drawings really stand out.

Free Lapbook

For younger children, you can get this free lap book where you can have all sorts of pirate fun by adding mini-books with pirate words and a find the treasure game.

You'll find it at the bottom of her page.

Rainforest Activities

This is another perfect idea which you can see in our homeschool science rainforest for kids activities. Here are some things you could include:

• A mini book on carnivorous plants. All sorts of fascinating stuff here, and you could make everything come to life by finding out how to make a terrarium for your own Venus fly trap or pitcher plant.
• Lots of drawings, coloring pages and photos of the wonderful animal life of the rainforest in our free Rainforest Animal Action Pack.
  

1. A mini book on the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.
2. Make mini books using plants - either a pitcher plant that opens out to reveal insects as in our rainforest activities, or a bromeliad with a frog pool.
3. Make a rainforest diorama, using our homeschool ocean diorama as a model.
4. It's always fun adding a few rainforest treats. And since the cocoa tree is native to the rainforest you have every excuse for sticking on a chocolate wrapper!

Free Space Lapbook printables

Here's the Space lapbook Bianka and her son made.

You can find lots of useful space resources, including this free planets printable, on my space page here.

Making a lapbook is a great way for kids to bring together all the stuff they know in a fun way which will really help them learn.

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Homeschooling › Writing › Lapbook

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