Food Lapbook

I pieced this lapbook together mostly from my own ideas, but you can find lots more grocery lapbook ideas here.  This is my favorite lapbook we've done so far, and is the most do-again and game-like. The kids love it and I'm confident they are learning so much! 

Goals: 

• To gain understanding that food does REAL things for our body, we don't just eat food because it tastes good.
• To build money skills in how to read $ amounts and figure numerical order.
• To practice real-life skills such as menu planning and "looking for the cheapest price"

full view

 Food Pyramid (I realize that nutritionists don't 100% follow this same pyramid anymore, but it's the shape I wanted, and it does show the basic idea, including 8 cups of water a day, and mostly we're just focusing on the food groups anyway) These are the pockets for food cards which will be used in nearly all the activities.

#1 Sort food cards according to food group.

 # 2 Sort food cards according to color (mostly just the fruit and vegetable cards)
#3 Sort food cards according to where they come from (trees, animals, gardens, fields) I don't want my kids growing up just thinking food comes from the grocery store!

#4 Use food cards to lay out a daily menu plan. (use the serving suggestions on pyramid to help make sure diet is balanced)

 

#5 Money cards -- set out three cards and have child pick which $ amount is the smallest (we practice this in the grocery store too when I'm buying something)

#6 Money cards -- set out 3 or 4 cards and have child arrange them in order from smallest to biggest

#7 Money cards -- set out 4 (or more) cards and read a dollar amount and have child find correct card

#8 Money cards -- play same game as #7 and have child play game at YOU so HE is the one reading the $ amounts.

# 9 Money cards (including orange coupon cards) - select the whole-number $ cards and practice adding and subtraction, pretending the orange cards are your coupons at the end

 

#10 Just a general picture showing what different food groups do for our body. Use the clues to figure out what part of the body certain food groups help. Then glue the description onto the right food flap.

#11 An ABC list of foods, creating the border (for a complete food alphabet click here)

On the front of the flap-down 

#12 Vitamin chart (the info is all the same as this chart, minus the quantity column) I just reformated it so it could be a flip chart. Again the actual details of each vitamin aren't all that important. It's just neat to see that food works in an REAL way for our body!

#13 Kids' grocery list. Get out your store ads and let the kids practice cutting and gluing as they create their own "grocery list". I allowed them 2 treats but everything else had to be healthy choices.

 

 #14 And finally, to complete our lapbook, we included the Biblical tie-in for how our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit so we are to take care of them. I had the kids color to make it look like themselves. This is glued on to the back cover of the folder.

It took us several days to complete all the activities, and now we can play again and again!

 DOWNLOAD LAPBOOK COMPONENTS:  

Money Cards and Meal Planning

Vitamin Chart

What does food do for my body?

Food Cards

Pocket Pictures

My body is a temple, coloring page

I think this includes everything to make your lapbook, though it will probably take a couple minutes to download. 

Instructions: 

*I do not have a file for the food pyramid because I just drew it myself and now I can't scan it or anything because of the pockets on the lapbook. 

* And I also don't have files for the pockets themselves. They are a large fat T-shape that you fold together to make your pocket though.  Use the food/money cards to gauge how big the pockets need to be.

* Except for the pocket fronts, the vitamin chart, and the "what does food do for my body" flaps, everything else is printed on cardstock. The pockets are also folded out of cardstock.

Enjoy and let me know if you use this!

Wordless Lapbook

The kids and I made a Wordless Lapbook, using most of our ideas from Just Call Me Jamin but we changed it up a little bit, added a few things, and gave it our own twist! It's a pretty simple one...

Here's the inside view. 

I arranged the mini color books so they'd form the shape of a cross (obviously you can see that there) Our booklets are made like Only a Boy blog (minus the drawn pictures) but the text is the same as Jamin's.  And we added the little poem from Only a Boy but we placed it in the middle of the cross.  Download the printables for the color booklets HERE.

Then we added the ABC's of salvation (download HERE), formatting it more like Jamin's.  If you flip up the text part, you can read the Bible verse that goes with it.  (the only thing I don't like is that this ABC book is on the fold of the lapbook, and that's a little bit awkward when folding)

We included the lyrics to our Gospel Fuzzies song (top left) and the GROW mini book (bottom right). Both printables can be found HERE.

The cross picture in the top right is just a coloring page found HERE I printed smaller and had Eli color.

The back of our lapbook folder is a color by number, glued onto construction paper just to add more color.

And honestly, we don't have anything on the front cover of our folder, but you can put whatever you want.  This was a pretty simple lapbook, didn't take much time to prepare it. (some lapbooks can really take forever and ton of printing and cutting!!) 

Then as a bonus activity, the kids and I made these Gospel Cookies (in a jar), adapted from these super cute Girlfriend Cookies. Instead of part M&Ms and and part chocolate chip, we used all M&Ms using the colors of wordless gospel, using some white chips for the white layer. So you fill the bottom half of the jar according to the recipe instructions.  Then add your layers: green, yellow, white chips, red, and brown, topping it with your 1/4 cup brown sugar.  I didn't have any coordinating fabric for the top of the jar, so it's just plain (oh well).  Then you add a fun label for your jar, include a rolled-up paper with the meanings of the colors, and give it away to someone!  The idea is that we'd leave the jar in the middle of our dinner table and every time we pray for our meal we pray for who we might share these gospel cookies with.  Then before Easter we give them away to our chosen person!

kids are color sorting the M&Ms while I prepare the flour stuff for the jar.

CARS Lapbook

Lightning McQueen is Eli's favorite movie, favorite books, everything.  So I really wanted to make him a lapbook with those themed activities, but this awesome totbook is much too easy for a 4-yr old, so I enhanced it to make it more appropriate for Eli's skill level.  

Cover

 

Inside View

 all the stuff pulled out and opened

time for the fun!

1.Trace inside the title letters{Cars}.

2. Color Lightning McQueen.  Glue both 1 and 2 to cover.

 3. Read Lightning McQueen story and talk about Bible verse.  This Bible verse image is from my friend Randi (thanks!!)
4.  Name book.  I typed the letters for Eli's name but arranged them in the wrong order.  I cut the strip of letters from the paper, and then had Eli cut the letters apart, put them in the correct order, and glue them to his name book.

 a happy observer

 5. Counting cards. Put them in order.

 6. Cars color book.

 7. A pocket of maze cards, laminated so he could do them again and again with dry erase markers.  Make sure to wipe them clean right away or you'll really be scrubbing later. Maze1, Maze2, Maze 3 (I thought I saved the link but now I can't find it).

 8. -ar word family.

 9. This doesn't really go in the lapbook, but it's a worksheet that leads into the next activity.

 10. Read and color mini book.  I made a pocket for it so Eli could take it out and read it easier.

Train Lapbook

Most of our resources came from HERE, and there were still things I didn't have room to include!

the cover

 the inside view, with extra flap (blue page) folded down

 the inside view, extra flap folded up

the extra flap

First Eli started by painting these shapes, although I didn't tell him yet what he was going to be using them for.  We let them sit to dry while we moved on to the rest of his activities.

I love to watch him paint.

put the train cars in order

then count the circus animals and put them in the correct train car

vocabulary fan book

cutting the pictures to go in the vocab book

practicing writing the letter T

telling time.  look at the clock on the train ticket, tell me what time it says, I write it in digital form on the ticket, then he punches the correct number holes for the time.  I was really excited for this part, but the puncher actually ended up being pretty tricky for his little hands.  He loved the tickets though and telling time, and he still gets them out again to play!

a train color-by-number page I found just to add to his folder (you can find it HERE)

T words mini book.  I printed these on sticker paper just to have something different from gluing and pasting.

exploring everything again