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Dawn
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| Posted: Feb 01 2006 at 10:57am | IP Logged
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How many notebooks are you and your children currently maintaining, and for what subjects/projects?
I can get a bit carried away with new endeavors  ~ and all the ideas I find here are SO wonderful ~ and while I really want to jump into notebooking, I also want to keep it manageable so I don't burn out.
Thanks for your thoughts!
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Dawn, mum to 3 boys 
By Sun and Candlelight
The Nature Corner
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Rachel May
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We have one for poetry, one for saint narrations, and one for other lit narrations that we use regularly. We made one of the Solar System that we will add to when we do mythology, we have a general one for science and health so I can prove to the school district that we do it, but we don't add to it unless I have something worth doing, like a drawing on bats with short copy work. These aren't neat like those that I've seen Elizabeth post pictures of. Except for the solar system which I put in a report folder, they are just blank books, and I find they are good enough for the school district and not overwhelming to me.
This month we're going to jump full force into "real" one for Black History Month. We'll put our black artist study, civil rights movement music, famous people bios, "I have a dream" memorization, ethnic recipes, family rememberences/reflections on race, etc in there with real flaps and pictures and whatever else I can think of. I'm excited to do it with them, and I've been wanting to do a "real" lapbook for a while.
One thing I will say is that my kids love to look back at all of their books so I'm not finding the somewhat boring format of the first books is holding them back. 
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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MichelleW
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Each child maintains on a regular basis: a poetry notebook, a reading notebook, geography notebook and bible notebook.
Currently all three are doing a First Communion Notebook.
We maintain one history notebook for all of us together.
This sounds like a lot, but it really hasn't been. We enjoy doing our notebooks and it is such a great learning/organizational tool.
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lapazfarm
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For 10yo ds: We start a new notebook with each unit-study we do. These include all subjects related to the theme. Once the study is over, we shelve that notebook and move on to another. Plus we have a religion notebook, history notebook and timeline book, science notebook and a dragon notebook (ds likes dragons) that we add to occasionally as ds produces work in these subjects. However, most of his work goes into the unit-study notebooks. Writing and copywork is always tied to a content area, so it goes into the appropriate notebook, rather than a seperate one.
The unit-study notebooks are alot like lapbooks, in that they have fold-outs, pockets, etc. I have pictures of some pages of our Christmas notebook and our dragon notebook up at my blog, if you would like to see them (search back a ways). We are about to finish our Pirate study and I will bind all that up into a notebook when it is done. The ongoing notebooks are much simpler-just a 3-ring binders with page protectors.
For 4yo dd: She has one notebook which is divided by letters of the alphabet. Whenever she does stuff we put it in according to the letter. For example, all her pirate stuff goes under P.
It's pretty simple.
Lapazfarm Home Learning
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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Dawn
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| Posted: Feb 01 2006 at 3:52pm | IP Logged
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Thank you so much for your replies! I really enjoy hearing how you "notebook." 
Theresa, your Christmas notebook ~ absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!! I love the vibrant colors and pictures, so much to see and yet it's all laid out in order, easy to follow. I showed your son's Dragon NB to my 10 yo son (also a dragon nut), and he was like "Wow! Can we do that too?!" 
I know I would really like to start a religion notebook, of some sort ~ one for myself as well as for the boys ... perhaps a Lent/Easter season notebook as that gives me some time to get organized.
I would also like to make a Prayer book using the smaller size binder (I read about that idea in the archives). My middle son will be making his First Communion in 2007, so that is something to think about for later in the year.
Thanks again for the ideas!
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Dawn, mum to 3 boys
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cathhomeschool
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I find that the great thing about notebooking and binders is that we can modify and reorganize them as needed. Currently, the boys each have a Book of Centuries, Nature Notebook, Math notebook, Language Arts notebook, Liturgical Year notebook, and a "unit we're currently working on" notebook. Most are pretty simple. The math notebook is just a binder for their math worksheets. The Liturgical Year notebook is in its beginning stages. It contains the Easter Vigil project that we did last year, and a few other things, but I hope that we will continue to add to it so that we have pages there representing many different feast days and holy days. The Language Arts notebook holds spelling lists, completed topical units (like FIAR), some narrations and poetry, and random geography worksheets and art drawings that don't fit in elsewhere. Now, should we decide in the future to really focus on poetry more or when the Language Arts work outgrows the notebook, I'll just redivide it all and rename the notebooks. It's such a low pressure system for us.
Theresa, I just LOVE your notebook pictures! We've done several lapbooks and sometimes try to embelish our regular narrations scrapbook-style, but it had never occured to me to do a lapbook-style book in a notebook. I can't wait to give it a try with the kids! Thanks for the inspiration!
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Janette (4 boys - 22, 21, 15, 14)
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lapazfarm
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Thanks, Janette and Dawn for the compliments on the notebooks. It is something ds and I enjoy doing together and looking back on later. The nice thing about notebooking, as Janette pointed out, is the flexibility. Every notebook we do looks different in style and format depending on what is going into them. I'll have pictures of the pirate notebook up soon at my new blog, and it is completely different in format from the others.
The one notebook that is confounding me is the religion notebook. But I am hoping to gain ideas from all you ladies here.
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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Dawn
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cathhomeschool wrote:
| The Liturgical Year notebook is in its beginning stages. It contains the Easter Vigil project that we did last year, and a few other things, but I hope that we will continue to add to it so that we have pages there representing many different feast days and holy days. |
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Janette,
I've been reading the Easter Vigil notebook thread from last year in the archives ~ what an amazing project!!! Wish I had been here last spring! I'm so glad this board keeps archives because I learn so much there.
I am also starting a Liturgical Year notebook; currently I am in the planning stages. I am trying to narrow my focus a bit because it seems like there is just so much that could/should be included, the notebook would be over-flowing (not that that's a bad thing ).
I just want to be organized about it, set some goals and start small ...
lapazfarm wrote:
The one notebook that is confounding me is the religion notebook. But I am hoping to gain ideas from all you ladies here. |
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Me too, Theresa!
Thank you all for sharing .
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Dawn, mum to 3 boys
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Kathryn UK
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Each dd keeps separate ring binder notebooks for history, geography and science, arranged chronologically, by continent and by scientific discipline respectively. Then we usually have a couple of smaller projects on the go that we keep in display folders - currently a Liturgical Year folder and a Rosary folder, and Hannah also has an "animals round the world" folder. Rachel was doing "flags", but after the first few we decided that it was getting too tedious. I think we may combine the Liturgical Year and Rosary folders into a religion ring binder notebook. I sometimes copy a page and put it into two separate notebooks - for example, a page on St.Nicholas would go into both religion and history.
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Dh Michael, Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06)  (11/07)
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Dawn
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Kathryn UK wrote:
| I think we may combine the Liturgical Year and Rosary folders into a religion ring binder notebook. |
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Hi Kathryn, and thanks for your reply.
I hope you don't mind my asking, but I'd love to know more about your Rosary folder. I am just introducing the Rosary to my older two boys (and re-introducing it to myself).
What kinds of things did you do with your girls for this notebook?
Thanks again.
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Dawn, mum to 3 boys
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Kathryn UK
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Dawn, it is very simple - nothing creative! It just has a cover page (picture of a Rosary), a page with the basic prayers, and then narrations of the Bible stories for each of the mysteries. We are just finishing off the Luminous mysteries, then will do the Sorrowful mysteries during Lent and the Glorious mysteries during Easter.
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Kathryn
Dh Michael, Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06) (11/07)
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Dawn
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Kathryn UK wrote:
| Dawn, it is very simple - nothing creative! |
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Kathryn, it sounds lovely ~ thanks for the ideas .
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Dawn, mum to 3 boys
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Becky Parker
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We do notebooks for each subject, but none are quite as elaborate as some of the beautiful ones I've heard discussed on this board. Our Religion notebook is currently divided into "Saints" and "Symbols". Whenever there is a feast day, the kids make an entry into their notebooks. If there is no feast day we do a symbol of the church and what it means. I think I'm going to change it next year. We'll just have dividers in it for each of the liturgical seasons (ordinary time, Advent, Christmas, ...)and anything we work on, including the Saint's feast days will go behind the tab of the current liturgical time. Does that make any sense??? I think it will have to be a pretty thick binder.
I wish I could get my kids more interested in doing their Literature notebooks. They are supposed to do a narration for the books they read and perhaps draw a picture or decorate the page in some way. The 7 yo enjoys doing hers sometimes, but the 12 yo really doesn't like it. He keeps his narrations as short as possible, and forget the decorating thing.
The Science notebook is mostly a nature study notebook, but I don't do a very good job of having them do entries. We started doing "Monthlies" not too long ago. The kids make an entry each month for a bird, a mammal, a reptile or amphibian and a flower or plant. They try to do one a week. We decided they should get information about the "monthly ____" from books because we might not see anything on our nature hikes. We started out trying to spot something from the particular category they were working on, but it seems the only mammals we saw (besides dogs and cats) were squirrels.
I would love to have my kids do a really special "copy work" notebook. They would fill it with quotes and scripture verses and decorate the pages... I think this is wishful thinking though. I'm not sure my kids would enjoy it as much as I would. Maybe I should do my own! 
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Topic: how many notebooks?
