Squares and Rectangles lapbook

Assalamo aleykum,

Alhamdulillah we managed to wrap up some nice activities about squares and rectangles. I had originally thought of having a lapbook about quadrilaterals (with trapezoids, rhombuses and parallelograms too) but there wasn't going to be enough space to explore the difference between all of those shapes. So we stuck with the easier ones for the time being. It is very similar to our Triangles Lapbook, and again it all started with an Amazon box I had received a book in (alhamdulillah for saving them!):

 

 

The colour scheme is a little out there ... eh eh. Anyway, the first part is a collection of some creative bits and bobs: Yusef cut out and coloured his own cardboard shapes (and made some holes in them so they could breathe... bless him!) and then we built a robot using squares and rectangles (the base of the robot was one we had left from this build your own robot craft kit, but it can easily be recreated).

 

On the middle section we built the shapes with cut drinking straws, the straight parts for sides and the bendy bits to make angles, and we made a little flap inside each shapes under which we hid the answer to the questions:

 

 

 

(^^In the middle of the assembly work, Yusef decided he had to spell my name with sticky letters, so I included in the lapbook. Apparently my name is "Mommi", see above, bottom right <3 masha'Allah)

 

The third part is the one that is full of surprises. On the outer part of the horizontal flaps we stuck 3 minibook we had made, 2 of them are collections of geometrical puzzles - intended for much older people - but that I use to let Yusef practise his ability to identify the shapes (those that are more apparent of course) and to count them, within his ability of course:

 

 

 Unlike the similar minibook we made about triangles,most of these puzzles each featured more than one kind of shape, s he had to be careful to colour only the one that was relevant to the exercise:

 

 

 

The 3rd minibook features pictures of objects that can be either square or rectangular, labelled with the object name that Yusef traced, masha'Allah. I do realise all objects are 3D, so I tried to choose flat things, to make it less obvious to a 4 year old:

 

 

Under the flaps, we practised some "measuring in non conventional units". I simply printed out some grid paper (medium and large from here ) on white and coloured paper and drew some shapes for Yusef to fill in with squares, cut from coloured paper. He then counted how many squares were needed to make each shape and wrote the numbers. (Barak Allahu feek to Aisha, my sister in Islam and "home educator extraordinaire" - masha'Allah - for telling me about non conventional units of measure!!!... I had no idea)

 

 

During a recent conversation with my (birth) sister, I was reminded about PATTERNS and though "We haven't done patters in ages!!!" so we devoted the last bits of space left (under the horizontal flaps) to patters, made with squares cut out of the leftover card we had used:

 

 

 

This was good fun alhamdulillah :)

 

Everything can easily be found online/reproduced, however, if you want to save time, here is what I used (they are NOT looking very professional, please bear with me...):

 

How many rectangles can you see?

How many squares can you see?

Same object rectangular and square

Various labels (including blank speech bubbles to add to the finished work the best quotes from your child as he/she was making it)

 

 

Our first lapbook is finished! alhamdulillah

Assalamo aleykum,

Since researching a little about lapbooking, I have been really really excited about it. It seemed like a very interactive and very creative way to collect the various bits and bobs we would otherwise do and consolidate learning.

Let alone that it is totally up my street, craft-wise...*emanates hearts*

Given that I am still playing it by ear and that Yusef seems obsessed with shapes lately, I decided we'll start with a lapbook on triangles. It seemed like an obvious choice since it is the shape with the least sides.

Now this may seem an ordinary Amazon box to you...

But once opened...TA DAAAA!!!!

 

First thing first: I printed off 2 A4 sheets of (large triangle) isometric paper from here to work as background, you could print more and cover the whole thing, but I wanted to leave some white.

 

Then we started off counting sides and angles of the shape. Not a problem for Yusef since we have just introduced polygons masha'Allah... but how to represent it? We chose to cut up drinking straws and pick 3 straight segments to demonstrate the number of sides, and 3 of the bendy bits to represent the three angles:

 

 

Then we went on to speak about the different kinds of triangles. After thinking of the possible ways to categorise them, I decided to just do so according to their sides (and not angles) so we made 3 flaps, for equilateral, isosceles and scalene triangles. I let Yusef trace the adjectives and place them on the outside of the flaps, as well as an example of each triangle.

 

 

We used sticky starts to mark the sides that are the same. Inside he traced the definition of each kind of triangle (I also put it in print, for clarity's sake, as he can get carried away with the tracing and make it a little "obscure" masha'Allah). We added a few example of each.

 

The pictures of triangles are from math-salamanders.com (each printable also come in b/w for the child to colour, personally I thought Yusef already had enough colouring in, as you will soon see...).

 

The 2 orizontal flaps (on the right side of the box) were covered with green paper (since the isometric grid we printed was - randomly - green, I chose that as main colour). On the ouside of the lower flap, we stuck the mini book we made about triangle road signs.

 

I simply collected pictures of triangle road signs from the internet and wrote a simple description for Yusef to match. I picked signs that are quite self explanatory. If you want, I can spare you the search, here they are: Triangular road sign activity minibook

 

On the top flap we stuck a pocket (not a proper lapbook pocket, but an empty pack of blue-tack covered in green paper! ... I had lovely templates, but my printer didn't take the cardstock I have and I was impatient ...).

 

The pocket contains some really great colouring job Yusef did over the last couple of days, identifying all the triangles in the shapes I found online by googling "How many triangles can you see?"

 

 



I cut the pictures and mounted them on some cards, punched a whole (or a few, in some cases...oops!) and we secured them with some string. The pictures to colour in are here: How many triangles can you see? you could make into a minibook too.

Inside the flaps it's a collection of pictures of triangular things. Again, from the internet. I also printed labels in a tracing font for Yusef to trace the names of the objects. There's a lot of flying things, because he is very much into planes and similar things at the moment. Here are most of the pictures I used: Pictures of triangular things

Here we also included a minibook (the hexagonal one above) taken from Enchanted Learning, but instead of drawing the items mentioned (Yusef is not much for drawing), we cut out pictures.

(By the way, NEVER google an image with the word "underwear"... seriously, what immediately popped out was enough to turn my stomach...I might be naive but also people are sick out there!!!)

Here is our lapbook, we really enjoyed making it, although Yusef saw all the bits and pieces together so one second he was tracing, then the next he was colouring in and after another 2 seconds he was cutting...lol. I'll make sure I hid the material next time! Insha'Allah we'll make one also for other categories of shapes... watch this space!