The Greatest Inventors from A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks: A TOS Crew Review

   Our family follows a more literature rich style of learning. We love good books and that is where I am most comfortable teaching. Still, we like to experience new styles of learning. The girls especially like to try new things when they involve hands-on learning, which is exactly what The Greatest Inventors from A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks gave them!   If you have never heard of lapbooks the best way I can describe it is the process of students recording and compiling their learned information into a scrapbook created with file folders. As the students study they record the information and include it in the lapbook. This style of learning is very creative, but in an orderly way.  

When I told them we would be using a lapbook they were thrilled! I prepared notebooks for them with the study material. There are many wonderful option resources listed for use to study. Many of the titles for this inventor study were already familiar to me and most are available at our local library. The extensive list of resources gives plenty of options for how in-depth you want your students to study. At the same time, the study material included is enough for a full learning experience. I chose to do the latter and allowed the girls to study further whichever inventors the wanted. 

Since all three girls are excellent readers, so I decided to try a traditional classroom trick. I had each of them take turns reading paragraphs from the research material. I had no idea how they would feel about this approach, but they seemed to love it! I love how well-researched and factual the material is, while at the same time being intriguing for my daughters.

Although this is not our typical way to study, I was highly impressed with The Greatest Inventors. In all honesty I have shied away from lapbook studies because to me they appeared to be overwhelming to prepare and somewhat complicated to compile. I learned this to be the furthest thing from the truth! It took less than 30 minutes of preparation to print the research material and lapbook pieces as well as put together the 3 lapbooks. That is really very minimal effort. In addition my girls clearly enjoyed this method and that is the most important thing.