February Contest: Lapbook Art

[Valerie]

UPDATE: WE HAVE A WINNER........

and our winner is Aadel, who shared this adorable photo of her daughter's owl lapbook cover art:

Congratulations!


Original Post Below:




Wow! Everyone had so many amazing ideas to contribute with our January contest on organization, that I thought February we could keep the ball rollin' and try to see what ideas we can come up with incorporating ART into lapbooks!

I love to draw, and my children love to make their own pictures and creations to add to our lapbooks....sometimes the art activity is structured, like with our Draw, Write, Now program.

(This is a penguin my daughter learned to draw with Draw Write Now, Book 4 for our Penguin Lapbook)

Other times, it's really based on Whim.....like when we were learning about ocean animals and my daughter (4 at the time) came to me with this little octopus she had made...

They're both so adorable, but it's easy to know which one I cherish more...the little octopus that came from my child's imagination, unstructured, unplanned, and invaluable.

In fact some of my favorite pictures that I've seen from members are the ones that include children's original artwork. There is just something so unique and special about their view on the world, it's hard to put into words or describe the feeling.......

But, I'm asking you to try. For our February Contest, lets hear all about how you explore ART with your lapbooks!

1. How do you incorporate their artwork into the lapbook (i.e. store in a pocket, use as a cover page...something else?)

2. Or if you've done an Art specific lapbook, or made an Art portfolio lapbook, tell us all about it!

BONUS ENTRY: If you upload a photo of your child's artwork, you'll get an extra entry. (If this is the case, just attach the photo(s) in a second comment...that will be your second entry!)

I'll leave this post open for entries till the end of February, and then I'll announce the random winner of the giftcard then!

[Loni]

We may use art work for the cover of a lapbook, or "clip art" (done by my children :D)
More recently, I have had them do like a "notebooking mini-book"... one where they have either copywork with a drawing, or writing with a drawing... my older two children love to draw, and paint. So it works kinda as a reward for good handwriting :D

[Loni]

This is my daughters photograph of the first Thanksgiving.

This is my oldest son's copywork and notebooking mini-book.

[Karilyn]

My children LOVE to draw, make pictures, etc. So, I try to "help or guide" them into drawing what we are studying at the moment! They love to make their own creatiions with artwork. Also, my kids have really started liking to take photos, so they will sometimes take a photo of what we're studying and they want to includ that in, so we may make a "mini scrapbook page" for them with their photos. Also, they like to build (with legos, clay, etc.) things to go along with what we're studying, so I'll take their photo, get it printed, and let them put it on a page in their lapbooks! One thing I like to do is to make our books with a binder that we bought. I bought some clear covers (cheap from ebay!) so that art work can be upfront, seen, and it doesn't get wrinkled or dirty (sometimes!) Before we bought our binder maker I liked to use the binders (bought at garage sales or thrift stores!) with the sleeve on the front cover-for the same reason! For our lapbooks I try to alternate between my 2 children on what they love, so for them it's easy for them to make their artwork. Another thing if we have too many beautiful artworks (quite often!) we will just use the clear contact paper to "laminate" their drawings and put it in their lapbook. They have both started getting picky with their things and they want to make sure that it stays in "good shape and it doesn't get ruined, mom." :) I guess that they're both getting older! These are just a couple of ways that we incorporate art into our projects! I hope that this maybe helps someone else! Blessings! Karilyn

[Aadel]

My oldest daughter (8) loves to draw with pencil and color her illustrations with markers. With our knights and castle lapbook, she made a pocket on the last page for all her artwork. She drew a knight, horse, queen, king, and dragons.

For most of our lapbooks, we make the artwork my daughters create into their cover pages. This was the case with our recent project, owls. I have also made blank mini-books, and allowed the girls to write and illustrate it themselves. These kind of books work nice for lapbooks about literature and history.

[Keri Nahirny]

I have 4 children all of who love art, any kind of art for that matter. I couldn't possibly keep all the art work, so I file it into a laundry basket for the year. Then at the end of the year I go through the basket and pick my favorites to go into their school years scrapbook. I don't have the heart to just chuck the rest so I photograph each art. Sometimes the kids hold the work for me so I see their faces along with the art. I put all those photo's onto the computer. The kids love looking at all they have done. They laugh at the early stuff and chuckle at how small they were.
I still don't have the heart to chuck the art after the photo so we use it for wrapping paper or place it in the clip art/magazine box for future crafts. It's neat when the kids can create new art out of their own art.
I have only completed one lapbook last week with 2 of my kids. We covered solids, liquids, and gases GR.2. I suppose the photo's that I've taken should they cover the right topic would work in a lapbook. This way they don't take up too much space and could fit anywhere.

[Keri Nahirny]

Here are a few pictures of the kids with their art work. They worked so hard to get it just right!

[kay]

My kids love to draw! So I don't have to assign art, I use it as a reward. "If you finish your math I have an art project for you." Anyway I will try to get the pict up here not sure how to do that. They are posted on my page.

[Rebekah Emerson]

We do a lot of artwork around here... we love to incorporate art in different ways:
1. Pockets- if the art work is small enough- any of our lapbooks are good examples
2. Cut and Paste- as a lapbook decoration such as Alan's drawing of the Inuksuk in our 3 Snow Bears album
3. Alan likes to draw right on the lapbook itself- see his drawing of himself recycling in our Wall*E album
4. Pictures of large art- a lot of times we make projects too big for lapbooks so we take pictures and paste the pictures into the lapbook- our Dinosaur lapbook has pictures of "fossils" we made, our Hermit crab one has a picture of Alan's collage, and our Snowy Days lapbook has pictures of the mittens we made.
5. Finally, our minibooks will have artwork inside too. See our Night Before Christmas lapbook and our Snowy Days one.

[Michelle Armstrong]

We used the Homeschool Share's Hand, Hand, Finger Thumb lapbook for my 2 yob (over a long period of time). He did great! Seemed to enjoy it as well. He had just started using scissors and continued to take the left-over pieces to cut little fringes. So, I put those on the front of his lapbook and used others as decoration inside. He is still very proud of it!

(Still trying to scan it in... too many Valentine's parties however to take time to learn how right now!)

[mommy to 3 duckies]

Usually, we use artwork for the cover, but we have used it inside for the minibooks as well.

Her latest cover of Pocahontas

[Valerie]

Hey Everyone, I just posted the winner! See the original post above!

Congratulations and stay tuned for our March Contest coming shortly!

Blessings,

Valerie