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Angel
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| Posted: Sept 03 2006 at 4:00pm | IP Logged
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First, an admission: Although I enjoy scrapbooking (but am very far behind!), I am not a very crafty person. I also have a hard time getting organized and being prepared, but I am working hard at improving on this.
Today I was filing some artwork from last schoolyear, and I couldn't help thinking, it seems such a shame to just put this in a box in the basement. Notebooking fizzled for us last year, mostly because with newborn twins I just didn't have the energy (or time) to learn how to do it. My dd (age 7) and I did attempt a lapbook (on birds) last year, but that project ended up being half-done. We would like to try again this year, though.
Since I am a *rank* beginner, I have a lot of questions. Such as:
What supplies should I have on hand?
What do use for a notebook? A binder? A scrapbook?
Where do you keep the notebooks in progress and the finished notebooks?
How many notebooks do you have going at one time?
How do you (as mother/educator) prepare so that the experience is not frustrating for you or your children?
How do you work notebooking into your school day?
Do you notebook together as a family (all ages)?
Now that I have thrown out way too many questions for one post, I think I will have to stop and see what kind of disaster the babies and 3 yo have created in the family room.
--Angela
Mom to 3+2
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: Sept 04 2006 at 6:02am | IP Logged
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I keep notebooking very simple. Each child has four binders, one each for history, geography, science and religion. This year I am colour coding so one child has blue binders and the other green. Each binder is divided to make it easy to file things ...
History: 20 sections divided chronologically (6000BC, 4000BC, 2000BC, 1000BC, 500BC, 1AD, 200AD, 400AD, 600AD, 800AD, 1000AD, then every 100 years up to 1900AD)
Geography: Mainly divided by continent (UK, Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Australasia, Arctic / Antarctic). Each section begins with a map of the area, mostly printed from Enchanted Learning.
Science: Divided into different scientific disciplines (Botany, Zoology, Human Body, Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Environments and Weather, Astronomy, History of Science)
Religion: Old Testament, New Testament, Mary (includes Rosary), Saints, Church History, Catechism, Liturgical Year, Prayers and Devotions, Religious Orders, Judaism (dh is Jewish so I added in an extra section for any Jewish stuff we do)
Anything we do on paper gets filed in the appropriate binder (or if it fits in two then I copy it and put it in both - St.Patrick would go into both religion and history, for example). It can be an entire project, a single page on a topic, a record of a book read, a souvenir of somewhere we visited ... anything that will fit in a binder. I found we were always ending up with half-finished projects, oart-done lapbooks and so on. Somehow unfinished things look better in a binder where they can be added to later!
Supplies? Paper, pencils, pens, binders and page dividers. Page protectors if you want them - we don't use them as they make the binders more bulky. Anything else is an extra.
Once the binders are set up there isn't any need for preparation unless you want to do something fancy.
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Kathryn
Dh Michael,  Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06)  (11/07)
The Bookworm
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Kelly
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| Posted: Sept 05 2006 at 1:33am | IP Logged
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Kathryn, you are impressively organized! And yes, things DO look better in a binder  . We've been filing our writing exercises/history papers in notebooks for years, and the result is a very impressive set of "books" the kids have written. We keep them on low shelves in our "library"-for easy reference and also because the lowest shelves are the least popular shelves for stashing regular books. Good use of space. And it's definitely a whole lot easier to retrieve info.from a notebook than from some boxed up, filed-away file.
Sometimes we get bogged down in notebooks, so I hear you about having to be careful to not get too many things going at once. Like Kathryn, we seem to have about four notebooks in the pipeline at one time: we'll typically be working on our history notebooks, a couple of "special" notebooks or projects (currently, a travel notebook and the beginnings of a science unit study lapbook) and an art notebook. Sometimes I cross-reference work from, say, the history notebook to the travel notebook. EG we recently visited a fort built during the War of Jenkins Ear. The children's papers or projects on this war will be cc'd from history into their travel journals. Likewise, sketches they did of Rubens paintings while we were on the road visiting museums will be cross-referenced from their travel journals into their art notebooks. Yes, I do seem to do a lot of copying, but a good copier was my first homeschool "tool" and probably my best! My dc are well-versed in the skill of Running the Copier.  Each of my children also has a poetry notebook, but these are just those hard-covered excercise-books they sell by the boatload at Office Depot. No filing of papers involved there, very easy for keeping track of the poems they've copied and memorized (and the little ones illustrate).
My favorite supplies and resources are the aforementioned copier, a ready supply of card-stock, piles of glue sticks, lots of sheet protectors (they do bulk up your notebook, but my boys are pretty rough on their notebooks without them), Prismacolor pencils, gel pens, and digital camera & photo developing material. We take lots of pictures of projects to put in notebooks, or pics of dc on field trips or in historical costumes or whatever. These also go in the notebooks/lapbooks in the appropriate places. I have one of those little PhotoMate gizmos that you just slip your sd card into and develop your pictures. Extremely convenient. When we recently did a lapbook on "NYC and "Cricket in Times Square", we found ourselves on a rabbit trail involving cats. The dc took pics of themselves holding various breeds of cats belonging to friends & family, labelled the pic with the breed name, put them in the lapbook minibook. Simple.
Oops, I just remembered that we also keep a "Florida Field Trips" notebook-but we only add to that after fieldtrips, so that's pretty sporadic.
Kathryn mentioned color coding, and I wanted to add a resounding "hear, hear" to that tactic. Each of my children has an assigned color. Their notebooks, scissors, tape dispensers, book crates, backpacks, pens, exercise books, folders---just about everything I can think of-- are sorted by color/ This really helps keep them (and me) more organized.
Hope this makes sense. Good luck!
Kelly in FL
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: Sept 05 2006 at 8:17am | IP Logged
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Angela,
I know you also asked me this question on my blog and I wanted to let you know I am not ignoring you! I am planning a post on this very soon, as soon as I get it together! For now I will just say... lots of planning ahead, and a good chunk of time set aside for notebooking.
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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stacykay
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Kathryn UK wrote:
Anything we do on paper gets filed in the appropriate binder (or if it fits in two then I copy it and put it in both - St.Patrick would go into both religion and history, for example). |
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Thank you for including this info, Kathryn! I often wondered what to do for these situations. I never thought to copy them!
I agree, you sound very organized and your notebooks sound great! I am even more excited with this school year, with so many wonderful ideas we can incorporate in our studies.
God Bless,
Stacy in MI
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: Sept 06 2006 at 12:56am | IP Logged
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Kelly wrote:
| Kathryn, you are impressively organized! |
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I am impressed with myself  . It has taken me about five years to achieve this level of organisation  . One thing I forgot to add is that this year I am using an idea I'm sure I picked up here. Each girl has a project book for the current week's work. At the end of the week we can look through what they have done, show it off to Dad, and then file everything in the notebooks.
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Kathryn
Dh Michael, Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06) (11/07)
The Bookworm
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: Sept 07 2006 at 6:44am | IP Logged
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OK I finally got a post up on my blog about how we do notebooking
Sorry I took so long! I hope that it is helpful.
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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marianne
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| Posted: Sept 10 2006 at 12:56pm | IP Logged
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Cindy Rushton has a great book on notebooking. I think she calls herself "The Binder Queen" or something like that.
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SuzanneG
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Cindy Rushton has a website.
There are also 3 articles about notebooking in Cay Gibson's book Literature Alive! book that I found VERY helpful! I'm wondering if they are available somewhere on websites/blogs/etc. since Literature Alive! isn't available anymore.
Thanks for your great post about notebooking, Theresa....it's very helpful to see examples.
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Kelly
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Hey Suzgallus,
I love "Literature Alive!", too. As to procuring a copy, why not ask the author, since she's here on our message board! 
Cindy Rushton's articles are inspiring, too, and full of good ideas.
Kelly in FL
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SuzanneG
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Yes....I was trying to figure out how to "get someone in on the convo"....but hadn't figured it out yet...guess that's where the term "newbie" comes in handy as an excuse! What's the protocol for this?
Suzanne in WA
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Angel
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| Posted: Sept 14 2006 at 10:01pm | IP Logged
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Thanks for all the ideas! I got notebooks and supplies... but then dh went out of town, everybody got sick (still sick), and my parents are coming in this weekend for the babies' baptism and my oldest's First Communion... so no notebooking yet. When we all recover, though, I think I will give it a better go than I gave it last time.
(Also I do have Cindy Rushton's book and have been reading it... I would love to hear what Cay has to say as well... and Theresa, I loved your post! )
--Angela
Mom to 3+2
Three Plus Two
Wild Things
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Notebooking tips for beginners?
