Notebooking Overview and Ideas
Notebooking is a way of compiling
information learned. There are many different ways to
keep notebooks and we have done several over our years of
homeschooling.
This page shows a sampling
of some different ways we have kept notebooks.
Some of our notebooks are more like
books or booklets than you might think of as notebooking,
but I consider them similar.
This photo shows some booklets made by some of the
children on certain topics. The covers of the booklets
are cardstock or hand-marbled paper as in the one on the
right. They are stapled together. The green one
has ribbon stapled on and wrapped to the other side and
glued to cover the staples.
I'm sure you've all seen these simple composition
notebooks. One daughter is using this for the Spanish
she learns while studying in various books.
This is a 3-Ring Binder filled with a
variety of hand-writing, artwork, and certificates and
awards completed over several year's time. These are
kept in plastic page protectors for durability.
This is a catch-all place that we can later divide into
certain topics, if we wish.
This booklet covered with
decorated cardstock and fastened with brad
fasteners contains hand-copied poems that the child has
memorized over a specific time period. The next
picture shows the booklet inside.
The children also periodically spend
some drawing in sketchbooks with some coaching and
encouragement from me, sometimes with instructional
books on drawing. This year, though, we are spending
more time drawing in our nature notebooks, and this kind
of sketching is just spontaneous. This book is
covered with 12 by 18 inch sheets of construction paper with
blank white paper stapled between.
FOR OLDER CHILDREN, notebooking proceeds to self-directed
learning as Nathaniel Bowditch taught himself in the
book Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. When my
daughter reread that book recently, she commented, "Mom, he
really homeschooled himself." If you've never read
that book, I encourage you to do so.
As the children get older, junior high age, I 
encourage them to keep notebooks on
topics of their interest. This notebook is about
keeping bees, compiled with information from library
books. These pages can be later organized into 3-Ring
binders without much trouble.
The notebook on the right is a
3-Ring binder with information on farming kept by a
daughter.
And don't forget our poetry
notebooks, and timelines
are all notebooks too!
My daughter was inspired to keep more notebooks on her
own after I asked her to read Cindy Rushton's book,
Yes, You Can Be a Binder Queen.
I keep several notebooks for myself, writing
tablets, language arts ideas, math ideas,
homeschooling/library notebook, schedule notebook, and more.
Notebooking has become a way of learning for us.
I want to encourage my children to continue learning because
they find value in it, not because I make them, and
notebooking is a way to accomplish that goal.
