Ethiopian Lapbook

Almost forgot to post the pictures of the Ethiopian Lapbook that I made with the kids last week. Again, this was for a family that was adopting a little girl from Ethiopia and I wanted to take advantage of the interest in that country and learn a little about it.

First I took the regular folders and stamped them to look like African print. Each book was one folder and one extra page. I decided to mix it up and turn them to the side instead of the traditional up and down look.
I found a picture of the map online and printed it on card stock paper. Just googled it under images and found one I could use. I had to cut the picture in half to make it work but I really like how it turned out.From here you can see the stamped folder a little better. Here are the mini books that we used.

• Capitol City
• Main religion
• bordering countries
• Where in the World is Ethiopia
• Where is Gracie (the new sister) from
• Main language
  

I use plain white note cards for most of the mini books. Either 3 x 5 or 4 x 6 ones. It makes them a little bit stiffer than printer paper but not as thick as card stock.

Here the 2 side flaps are open and you can see the inside (and still see the top and bottom flap). I took half of a folder and cut it in half again to make the side flaps. Then just used packing tape to attach them. Our mini books include:

• African animals
• flag of Ethiopia
• money
• popular sport
• Are we there yet? (show how long it would take to travel there)
• Sun book share about it being near the equator and what that means

When I am planning a lapbook, I start to jot down things that I think might make good minibooks. Then I gather the info online using google or google images. A few of these books cam from a free website for homeschoolers (HERE).

You can see I write on the outside of most of the mini books and the kids do the writing on the inside. This time I had 5 kids making the lapbooks at once, so I did as much as I could myself. It took 3 sessions of about an hour each time to complete this lapbook. The girls took longer to do the coloring and drawing (they each drew their own African animals) and the boys took a little longer with the writing. But they all did a great job. 3 of these kids had not made a lapbook before, so I wanted this one to be kind of small and easy to accomplish.

I hope these lapbook posts are helpful to those friends who are looking for ideas on lapbooking and serve as inspiration to get creative.