Review: A Journey Through Learning

We tried lapbooks during our first year homeschooling.  Brianna, my typically artsy, craftsy girl, surprised me  by not liking them.  We didn't try them again until this year when we received several lapbook kits from A Journey through Learning to review for TOS Homeschool Crew.  I wasn't sure if Brianna's opinion had changed, but I thought that Megan, my other artsy/craftsy kid, might be really excited about doing them.  We jumped right into the Amphibians kit since, you know, we have a couple of resident reptiles (two snakes, if you didn't know that about me).

In case you've never heard of lapbooking, lapbooks are a method of showing what a child has learned and creating a memorable keepsake by folding a plain file folder into a "book." You can even connect several folders to each other to make a larger lapbook.  Then, you use a variety of "mini-books" to display the information inside the lapbook.

The Journey Through Learning kits are perfect for beginning lapbookers.  One of the things that I didn't like when we first tried lapbooking was figuring out what types of mini-books to include, how to display what we'd learned on said mini-books, and how to lay them out in the lapbooks.  With A Journey Through Learning, that's not a problem -- the kits include everything you need.  All you need to supply are the folders.

The kits include:

• Full-color printables
• Complete instructions on how to cut out each mini-book
• Layout diagrams
• A tips and tricks section
• Study guide (for most kits -- click that title you're interested in to be sure) 
  

The studies can be as simple or as in-depth as you like.  Details for additional study are included with kit, including suggested further reading, enrichment pages and tips on how to use the enrichment pages.  The topics available include Bible, literature, social studies, science and holidays.  The prices range from $13 for an instant download to $21 for a printed copy (the printed copy even includes 3 colored file folders).

Here are some examples from our Reptiles lapbook (please don't judge the kits based on my pitiful printer -- the actual colors in the kits are beautiful.  And, they'd have looked much better if I'd had colored folder, but, for some reason, years ago I bought a box of 100 plain folders.  I still have probably 80, at least.):

The final verdict is that my kids still don't like doing lapbooks.  I think it's the cutting and writing that they find tedious.  However, if we were going to do them, I'd definitely be using kits from A Journey to Learning.  Having everything I needed available in one easy download was an invaluable time- and sanity-saver.

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