Notebooking in Our Homeschool
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 6:00AM
In veering off of the "curricular path" this year we have been making some wonderful new discoveries! One of those is notebooking - something I had stayed away from because we didn't have time for it because of our schedule and curriculum. Don't get me wrong - I am all for a schedule, but I'm starting to get more comfortable with designing our own curriculum and letting my children's interests dictate the way a bit more.
We've been keeping notebooks for the Ancients (Story of the World Volume 1), so we are getting our feet wet with notebooks for each subject. I like the structure of learning through notebooks. We read information and then sit down together with our pencils and crayons and begin to mark our maps, color pictures, narrate, etc....
I've blogged before about our study of the book Calico Bush. What a beautiful book, and the learning opportunities in this story are endless. Miss B is using the book for a literature fair, and we wanted to learn more about the state where it takes place, Maine. Enter notebooking. We found some beautiful notebooking pages through Notebookingpages.com. It seems that if you want to learn about notebooking, then this is the place to go!
We took out our library books about Maine and sat down in the computer room to find any other information we needed. I gave Miss B the stack of notebooking pages and told her to use her nicest handwriting (I would help with spelling) and fill in the pages. She took such pride in this project! Once the writing was complete she went to get her favorite box of twistable crayons (we LOVE these!)
and started embellishing her pages.
She has several pages involving state history, industry, the flag, people, etc.... as she writes and colors she internalizes the information and has a beautiful product at the end. She is practicing her writing, research, and reading skills in the process. In my humble opinion, this is much better than any pencil and paper test!
We aren't doing anything super elaborate (I know some people take notebooking to the extreme, which I would love to do one day!), but for us it is manageable and memorable.
Do your children notebook? Do you have any notebooking resources for me -- remember, free is GOOD!
Reader Comments (8)
Hi: Your daughter has done a beautiful job. Your notebooks are going to be treasures. I was just going over my son's lapbooks from years ago and it brought back so many memories.
This is our first "official" year (I use that very loosely) of homeschooling and my daughter is still pretty little so we haven't done this yet. But, I love the idea and think we will do it next year. :)
I enjoy notebooking as well. We spend much of our days on "curriculum" types of things and the kids always look forward to our time spent on the more free, hands on approach of notebooking. Stopping in from the Hop!
I love the idea of note booking. It sounds similar to lap books. I am sure those books will be things you will keep for a long time!
We love notebooking around here, too. I use a lot of Sherri Westvon's notebooking pages.Most of them I download through Currclick.
Your daughter did a beautiful job! :)
We love notebooking! My favorite places for FREE pages are homeschoolshare.com, hslaunch.com, homeschoolhelperonline.com and highland.hitcho.com.au. I also do a lot of Google searches for whatever subject I need!
Have fun! :)
We use notebooking too! In fact, I have a notebooking blog called http://notebookingfairy.com" rel="nofollow">The Notebooking Fairy.
We haven't been notebooking, but it's something I would love to try! I'm going to try branching out and letting them pursue their passions a bit more next year!
Thanks for the ideas!
~Jennifer