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!
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 8:52AM 
My favorite notebooking site is The Notebooking Fairy. Jimmie has so many wonderful freebies - and truthfully she has inspired me to notebook a lot more with my children. My most recent find is a notebooking set all about the elements of fiction. This set is actually found at Jimmie's other site, Jimmie's Collage. Take a while to poke around both sites and you will probably be inspired to notebook a little more in your homeschool!
I love when I come across a blog and contact the author with a question or comment, and they take the time to get back to me. Jimmie has done this with a couple of questions I've had and I appreciate the thoughtful comments from a veteran homeschooler, who obviously has so much to offer. 
