Lapbooks and leaps forward

We made our first lapbook at the weekend. It started from the walk Harlan and I took together before he went to bed one evening. As usual we took a bag and he collected treasures - stones, twigs, feathers, catkins...

Usually we would get the glue out and stick his treasures onto paper or card, but we've done that many times and I wanted something different to do with them this time. So we made a Spring themed lapbook from card and added pockets and flaps to hold twigs, catkins and feathers. I laminated some of them to make them last longer, printed a picture of a ewe with its lamb and Harlan made a collage of a rainbow.

For the cover of the lapbook, I did a dot to dot of the word Spring, then Harlan joined up the dots. He has always lacked confidence in using a pen/pencil/crayon and rarely draws at all. But his love of dot to dots (which he already does on the computer) won out and he wrote his first word. We discovered that he gets very frustrated with crayons and pencils as he doesn't press down hard enough for them to leave a mark, so I found a felt tip pen and he got on much better with that.
 
Spurred on by that milestone, the next day I wrote his name in dots and asked if he would like to have a go at writing his name. He wanted me to help him, so I cupped my hand around his - despite me not actually guiding his hand at all, it gave him the confidence to try and he wrote his name for the first time. Cue one very proud mummy! That was yesterday, and today he has written his name again, this time in a card for his Great Grandad's birthday. He also asked me to do dots of his Great Grandad's name, Ted. I have a feeling Grandad Ted is going to be exceptionally pleased with this year's birthday card!