How to Make a Marie Curie Lapbook? If you find yourself researching great female legends of science, you can’t possibly leave out Madame Marie Curie!
Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.
How to Make a Marie Curie Lapbook
Marie was born in 1867, and lived until she died from radiation poisoning in 1934. While a tragic end, her contributions to science are legendary and puts her on the map to learn more about.
We don’t need to go in depth about her death, but to highlight her discoveries, and all that we learned from her life experience.
When trying to teach the littles about her – the best way to do it is debatable. My mom always used learning posters, but the updated version of that is the concept of a homeschool Lapbook.
It is basically just a folder that helps you organize the information you are learning – pictures, mini flip books, and writing/research are all added and when folded up? It fits in your lap, hence the name “lapbook”.
It is the process of creating a lapbook on a specific subject. It uses creative means to display unit studies, topics, or your project to help aid in the learning process as the subject is researched and learned. It is an active learning process. The most common lapbook background is a standard manilla folder.
It is merely a way to organize the research on a certain subject and keep it all organized.
That is what we are going to do today – make a Marie Curie lapbook to teach about this amazing woman! It all starts with a plain manilla folder and then our printables. The rest is up to you and your little student!
What you need for the Marie Curie Lapbook project
A manilla file folder, scissors, glue, and your choice of crayons, markers, or colored pencils. Add our free printable (below) and you are ready to rock out your research!
How did Marie Curie learn science?
She studied science by finding alternative ways to get her education, just for that reason: she was a woman. With both parents being teachers, education was important to her. She loved to do experiments – much like I do!
Isn’t that a great motivator? Do not let anything get in your way on your own quest for knowledge – that is why I started taking college classes when I was 9-years-old.
What did Marie Curie Discover?
That is merely one of the things you get to help teach your student! Not only did they discover Polonium and Radium, but you learn WHY they were named those terms.
Marie and her husband, Pierre, coined the phrase radioactivity.
They didn’t know the dangers of radioactivity, until it was too late. Marie died of of aplastic anaemia, a blood disease that often results from exposure to large amounts of radiation.
To this day, over 100 years later, her bones are still radioactive as well as her science journals.
What did their discoveries lead to?
Besides adding 2 more elements to the periodic table of elements, their research led the way for the X-Ray machine technology. The portable X-Ray machine was vital to helping soldiers in World War One.
There is also a group of institutes (Institut Curie) that are still used as spaces for vital cancer treatment research today. Her discoveries led to our current radiation therapy.
Marie Curie earned 2 Nobel Prizes
Not only was she the first woman to earn a Nobel Prize, but she was also the first person to be awarded TWO prizes, one for Physics in 1903 with her husband, and one in Chemistry in 1911. Not bad for a woman during the time when women weren’t even allowed to vote!
They were NOT going to give her the first award but her husband insisted on it. What an incredible guy!
Fun fact: when France was looking for metal to meld down for the war effort – Marie tried to donate her Gold Nobel metals – which were refused. She donated her prize money as a second choice.
That is enough or Marie Curie and her accomplishments
I could go on and on about this amazing woman, but want y’all to discover her yourself with the Marie Curie Lapboard project I put together for you.
The first think you need to do is to print off our FREE pages for the project:
How to build your Marie Curie Lapbook
Start by coloring out the different parts of the printable, cutting them out, and then gluing them on so you are creating your cover.
Use what ever color combination you want – but you have the major two accomplishments of Marie Curie right on the cover!
Then it is time to assemble the inside of your Marie Curie Lapbook
This is where everything else will go. Your mini flipbooks and all of your educational research.
You can see the flipbooks and how they let you pack more information into the limited amount of space:
Now, we have one more page that is important – it is used to summarize the lesson in the student’s own words. Try to instill the Who – What – Where – Why – When – and How concepts for writing the summary.
This goes on the back of the Marie Curie Lapboard so when you are reviewing things in the future? You can get a quick glance at the front to know the most important things and then the student summary on the back. You only need to open it up to refresh yourself on the different items in detail.
THAT is what makes Lapbooks so fantastic! Their handy dandy compact size means you can easily store them in a crate or drawer of a filing cabinet – I just LOVE these!
So, what are you waiting for? Dig into my Marie Curie Lapbook project and start learning more about this amazing woman and all she accomplished despite being a woman in a time when women weren’t supposed to be smart.
In case you missed it – get your copy of our FREE Printable Marie Curie Lapbook project here:
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