5 foldable activity ideas for science lapbooks

Making interactive notes in science is a fun way of making learning more hands-on. Lapbooks are a way of presenting information and can be made for a huge variety of science topics. They are a useful tool both in the classroom and for home school.

This blog post will give you 5 foldable activity ideas that you could use for science lapbooks. You can also use the individual components for interactive science notebooks.

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What is a lapbook?

Lapbooks are usually made from a large sheet of card, or a folder. Add Interactive paper elements with notes inside. These could include lifting the flap/tab activities, pockets with information cards, or elements that fold out in an accordion style.

Children can use them to organize research and display their learning, and they are ideal for project or topic-based work. I’ll be using the rainforest lapbook from my TPT store as an example.

Foldable activity ideas for science lapbooks

Pockets

Pockets are a simple way of presenting notes or fact cards. Use a basic pocket shape with tabs on the sides and bottom. Cut out the pocket, then fold the tabs backward and glue. Once stuck onto the lapbook, children can cut out cards to place inside.

Petal fold

Petal folds can be useful for showing a process with stages, with one petal for each stage. Examples could include a life cycle, phases of the moon, and the rock cycle. You can use these to show variations on a theme e.g. objects made of wood, animals with fur, types of deciduous trees. I used a petal fold to show examples of plants found in the Amazon rainforest.

Horizontal flapbook

Use 2 squares or rectangles of paper. The top piece has 3 or 4 flaps/tabs that you can individually lift to reveal information underneath. For science, they are useful for showing differences between layers (e.g. layers of the rainforest, layers of the earth). They are also great for animal ‘can, have, are’ activities.

Lift the flap

Use layers of different lengths, glued together at the top to organize written information. Alternatively, have a question or writing prompt on a single flap and children can write their response underneath.

Want to try out the ‘lift the flap’ book below? You can download this one for free in your preferred size below and even customize the headings. Plus you can use it for any animal!

Accordion fold

These accordion foldouts can be horizontal or vertical and they are useful for showing concepts that involve sequencing or stages (food chains, life cycles, how a fossil is formed). When closed, they show a picture on the front. They can then be opened to reveal information inside.

Creating the templates

You can create templates for your interactive elements using basic shapes on PowerPoint or on Canva. Alternatively, there are a number of sellers on TeachersPayTeachers who have pre-made foldable templates that you can add your own text and images to.

Pre-made rainforest lapbook templates

Save yourself loads of time and effort! You can grab all the templates for my Amazon rainforest lapbook (and others), ready to go with instructions from my TPT store here.

Supplies

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