Review: A Journey Through Learning

Do you enjoy lapbooking?  Have you ever even heard of lapbooking?  I discovered it many years ago and I've always thought it was a great way to learn.  A Journey Through Learning offers a multitude of lapbooks that you can use with your students.  I was given 4 lapbooks for this review and expected to complete just one, but we've actually finished two so I will share both.  We did Letters, Numbers and Shapes ,which is for ages 3-5 and The Earth, for grades 1-4.

A Journey Through Learning was created by two homeschooling moms, Nancy and Paula.  Take a moment to read their touching story.  If you are not familiar with lapbooking you may wish to watch these how to videos.

Letters, Numbers and Shapes is a 51 page pdf document with printable mini-books and activities to do with your younger children.  There are several booklets for tracing letters on the outside then copying the same letter under a flap on the inside, there is an ice cream cone triangle book, a firetruck rectangle book, number writing, a one-to-one correspondence activity with cards for matching numbers to objects, a booklet for matching capital and lowercase letters and more.

covers of the lapbooks Ellie and Connor made

You could choose to complete a booklet each day and have enough for about 4 school weeks.  We chose to just keep working on several books at a time and had this completed in about a week.  The end of the e-book contains 9 pages of finger plays, letter activities, poems, things to do with letters, learning about shapes with food.  There are lots of fun ideas in here to keep you busy for much longer.

a completed lapbook with the idea sheets that are also included

Connor matching capital and lowercase letters

cards to math numbers with objects

One of the things I really love about A Journey Through Learning is they provide you with an exact placement guide for each booklet in your lapbook.  You don't have to try to figure out what fits where! 

Here is a clip of part of the placement guide for this lapbook:

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The Earth lapbook is designed for your first to fourth grader.  It is an excellent introduction to Earth Science or would make a great go along for whatever Earth Science curriculum you are using.

The Earth is a 42 page e-book with directions for completing the lapbook, then each lapbook mini-book is accompanied by a page of text. No outside sources are needed to complete the lapbook.  There are 14 mini-books, a book list along with some songs, poems and crafts are included as well. 

The cover of Emma's lapbook

This is the cover of a layers of the earth booklet

and the inside of the same booklet

Part of the completed lapbook shown with the placement diagram that is included.

The Earth lapbook covers layers of the earth, types of rocks, landforms, seasons, mountains, volcanoes and more.

One thing I wanted to mention is that in the poem section there is a poem by Jane Yolen called Earth Day that starts out, "I am the earth, the earth is me." It's a little pantheistic for me, but it's not really a part of the study and you certainly wouldn't have to read it.  This would not prevent me from purchasing the study, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Overall, we had a good time with these lapbooks and will likely complete more in the future.  These lapbooks are especially fun for kids who enjoy crafts and making projects.

You can purchase Letters, Numbers and Shapes for $13 (as a download...see the link for more options) and The Earth is also available for $13 as a download and $21 printed.

A Journey Through Learning offers lapbooks to go along with Jeannie Fulbright's Apologia Titles, Classical Conversations and many more! They also have Express Lapbooks for only $1!

See what others are saying about A Journey Through Learning on the crew blog.

Touch Math for Pre-K

For the past few weeks my younger children have been using the Pre-K level of Touch Math.

Touch Math generously provided me with all 6 pre-school units and 3 different fun manipulatives; Touch Shapes,  3-D Numerals, and Texture Cards.

Touch Math Texture Cards and 3-D Numerals

Touch Math Pre-K includes:

• 90 Student Activity Sheets
• Implementation guide
• Six module guides complete with strategies and answer keys
• Pre-and Post tests for each module

Touch Math uses a multi-sensory approach.  Students see, say, hear and touch manipulatives and do paper and pencil activities.  This was very easy to prepare (just print out) and everything is laid out step by step.  There are pre-activities for each worksheet (or group of worksheets) and instructions in the teacher pages for each worksheet.  I printed out the worksheets as we went but I think in the future I am going to print out an entire module at a time and put them in a notebook since I tend to misplace things.

Sadie (3) completing a sorting activity with the Touch Shapes

Connor doing a Touch Shapes activity

This has been a wonderful curriculum not only for my 2 pre-school age children but for my son with Down syndrome who is older and hasn't really been able to grasp math yet.  He is making slow progress with this and I am THRILLED. This is the first time he seems to be grasping the idea of one to one correspondence.  YAY!

Connor...so proud of his work!

The 230 page pdf curriculum is divided into 6 modules. Each module has 15 workmats (worksheets that you print, but they refer to them as workmats.)  I really like these.  They are not only great for activities, but the kids enjoy coloring them too. They are all black and white which is nice for saving on ink.

Each workmat is aligned to a Common Core Standard if that matters to you.  (It doesn't to me.)  Answer keys are also found in the same module for each workmat.   A progress monitoring sheet is included if you like that sort of thing for record keeping.

I really like how the teacher pages (Instructional Strategies) lay out everything including scripted dialogue, pre-activities and instructions for each worksheet.

Here are a couple of clips from the Instructional Strategies:

The six modules include:
Counting and Number Sense
Comparing and Classifying
Sorting, Classifying, Graphing and Patterning
Identifying, Sorting and Classifying 2-D Shapes
Identifying, Sorting and Classifying 3-D Shapes and Coins
Representing Quantities and Numbers


Touch Math recommends you spend 2 to 2 1/2 times the learner's developmental age per day.  So a young child is only going to be spending less than 10-15 minutes each day building skills.  (love this!)

The Touch Shapes are definitely needed to start with this program.  Several of the workmats and activities require the use of the shapes.  (I guess you "could" make your own shapes with paper but if you're like me you never will.  Just go ahead and order them...that is my advice!)

The Texture Cards and 3-D Numerals are not needed early on, but would make a wonderful addition to the workmats (and are used in later modules.)  The 3-D Numeral set comes with the plastic numbers and a CD-ROM of printable worksheets to go along with them.  The worksheets also match the Texture Cards.

One last picture of Connor after completing a workmat.

I guess I've never really thought about purchasing a Pre-K math curriculum but now that we are using one I can see the value in it and I really like Touch Math and will consider continuing on with it when we finish the 6 modules of the Pre-K program.

View sample pages.

Purchase:
Touch Math Pre-K $59.95
Touch Shapes $30.00
3-D Numerals $79.00
Texture Cards $99.00




See what others are saying about Touch Math (various levels) on The Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.