Review: A Journey Through Learning

Home Science Tools Banner
* This post may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. *

Did you like this article? If so, please help by sharing it!

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.

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.):

lapbook 1
lapbook 2
lapbook 3
lapbook 4

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.

I received this product free for the purpose of reviewing it.  I received no other compensation for this review.  The opinions expressed in this review are my personal, honest opinions.  Actual results may vary.

+ posts

Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.

Did you like this article? If so, please help by sharing it!

7 Comments

  1. Ok, I'm SOOOO jealous right now. What a great time! You're Scrooge is amazing. And poor Megan! What a bummer about her autograph book 🙁

  2. A Journey Through Learning is our favorite type of lapbooks because of the points that you've stated. The mini-books, the templates to go by, and we LOVE the study guides!

  3. hi there, I saw this idea at another site yesterday. While I find it interesting, it seems repetitive. I guess you could make them as you learn about the subject or when you are doing a year in review type of thing. I might try it with my crafty child. 🙂 thanks for sharing. tereza

  4. We are lapbooking our way through the Revolutionary War, as we speak. My son HATES it. My daughter wants to make all of the patriots outfits pink….
    I'll hope that my son will like SCIENCE lapbooking better.

  5. I just saw that Jimmie over at Jimmies Collage makes a bunch of mini books ahead of time and lets her daughter pick from those when they are notebooking or lapbooking. That way they are available without all the work…which is what my son HATED about lapbooking. He said he would like it better if the books were already made and he could just put in the information he thinks is important. Just a suggestion!

  6. I'm with you on lapbooks. I tried doing that once — printed everything out before I realized I really didn't want to go through with it. All that cutting and filling in the blanks just doesn't appeal to me (or my kids either!).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.