I am not artistic. Not. at. all. Can't draw, can't paint, can't even cut well with scissors. My redeeming artistic quality is that I sometimes manage to copy someone else's ideas. Such is the case with "lapbooks," groovy little learning tools that you make yourself. Kind of like pop-up books crammed with monstrous doses of education.
Dinah Zike is the author of The Big Book of Books, which explains very well how to make all the elements for lapbooks. I found a perfect copy for 50 cents at a library sale last summer but never got around to reading through it, much less using it with my kidlets. So when Homeschool E-Store had its annual Black Friday freebie download bonanza and I scored a Grinch lapbook kit, I knew I at least had to try that one.
It bodes ill when I can't even get the folder put together correctly, does it not?
Still, I persevere. Two of the folders now lay under heavy books, coaxing the flaps to stay together. One is horribly wrinkled from liquid glue and the other, put together with a glue stick, is likely to separate itself at the first glimpse of daylight. (I really miss the library paste we had in school.) The third is waiting...waiting...waiting...
I know this is likely one of those things I'll improve with practice, but I can't help thinking sometimes that going against one's natural gifts and talents may be a mistake. Especially when I'm wearing glue instead of fingernail polish.
