One of the things I miss most about having a regular classroom is making booklets with kids. One of my favorites with third graders was a text features booklet we made every fall. The kids created pages for a list of about 25 text features and we poured through old textbooks to find samples of each feature. They cut out the samples and glued these into their booklets. Now, here’s the best part! We used these booklets for the rest of the year! Anytime we completed a nonfiction reading we pulled those booklets out to find the features in our reading selections. So fun!

Now that I am a specialist I don’t have those booklets to complete anymore…

Or do I?

The other day I saw a photo of a flip book. Now, I have done these in the past, too. We used to stack paper and then move the edges of the papers about an inch apart, fold the stack in half, and then staple it at the top. This made the flaps of the flip book. (Say that threes times fast!)

Anyway, I saw these little flip or flap books, but they have little tabs on them! So, they look like file folders. It took about 2.5 minutes for me to draw some templates and then the next day we tried one of these with my third grade STEM students.

THEY LOVED THEM! Take a look:

 This is just the most fun! We started with a set about the Scientific Method. And quickly added a set about STEM and then the Engineering Design Process.

For the Scientific Method, we talked about each step of the method and why it is used or needed. Then kids were able to decorate their pages. Since this is a skill we will work on throughout the school year I made sure to go through each step multiple times. The words the kids wrote in the flip book were composed as a group. I wrote these on my white board so kids could copy.

 Can you see that the scientist pictured above is saying, 

She is thinking about her hypothesis! Too creative!

 Above is a scientist that is thinking about the questions of his experiment. The one below is the same page!

After going through all the pages of the flipper here is the easiest part of all. The next step is to cut the little pages out.

Super easy cutting and then to put them together all you need is a STAPLER! NO GLUE!

Oh my, you had me at “NO GLUE!”

I really dislike glue.

But these little flippers are just stapled together. I’ll pause while you mull that over….. No glue oozing out. No glued together pages. No glue on the desks. No glued fingers.

Those two sets were related to STEM.

And then you have to see this set! Oh my, I really love this one. My third graders are studying about rocks and minerals and I just happen to have a set of 12 different rocks that I use every year to teach the rock cycle.

So, of course, I made a flipper about that!

 We watched a video about the rock cycle and then stopped to color and write about Igneous rocks.

 And then, the kids took my samples and tried to pull out the igneous rocks.

We did the same thing with the other kinds of rocks and then talked again about the rock cycle.

 Finished pages!

 Cut out and stapled together!

My favorite page!

There you have it! These little pages have been a big, HUGE, hit in my lab! I like the simplicity. The kids like the creative parts. They go right along with lessons we are having.

Sounds like a win-win to me!

If you’d like more information about the Little Flippers, click right {HERE}.