notebookinstructions

Notebooking

What is notebooking?

Do you want to add more creativity and variety to your child's school work, beyond the typical fill-in-the-blank worksheets? Are you tired of having your child's school work scattered all over the place and would love to have a system for creating a portfolio of your child's work? If so, notebooking may be just the thing for you. Notebooking is a term used for creating a portfolio or notebook of what has been learned in a particular subject area. For some more detailed descriptions of notebooking, visit the sites referenced below.*

How do I incorporate notebooking into our everyday homeschooling?

Different homeschooling families use notebooking in different ways. For some children, you can hand them a blank notebook and ask them to create a notebook on a specific topic (or a topic of their choice), and they will design an amazingly creative notebook all on their own. Other children (like mine!) need more guidance and encouragement to be able to create a notebook. That's why I set up a simple notebooking system for my own children -- to help guide them on what to include in their notebooks. If your child is like any of mine, this system may be just the thing for you. (Keep in mind that this system can be used regardless of the homeschooling method you use -- be it unschooling, online schooling, curriculum-in-a-box schooling, unit study schooling, eclectic schooling, and so on.)

What is my notebooking system?

1. Purchase a file folder sized file box for each child.

2. Set up hanging file folders in the box, labeling them with the general subjects your child will be notebooking (e.g., Bible, Science, U.S. History, U.S. Geography, World History, World Geography, Language Arts, etc.). Add two additional hanging file folders to the front of the subject hanging folders. Label the front one, "Today's Assignments," and the one directly behind that, "Today's Finished Assignments."

3. For each day you will be notebooking, fill out a separate assignment page for each notebooking subject. Print out any applicable notebooking pages (below), and paperclip the pages to the back of the appropriate assignment page. Place the pages in the "Today's Assignment" hanging folder.

4. As the child finishes the day's assignments, he/she places the completed work in the "Today's Finished Assignments" hanging folder. After school, the parent checks the child's projects and either files them in the appropriate subject hanging folder (or has the child file them), or places any unfinished or incorrect projects in the "Today's Assignments" folder (with a new assignment page noting the additional work to be done) for the child to work on the next notebooking day (or hands them back to the child to be worked on some more the same day).

5. When appropriate (determined individually by each family), the child (or the child and parent) pulls completed projects from the subject hanging folders in order to bind them together into notebooks. Personally, my family uses a comb binding machine for this. You can also take the projects to an office supply store to have them professionally bound. For a more economical binding method, you can simply place the finished work into a sturdy (e.g., sliding side-lock) report cover.

Notebooking Projects

(Links are for free resources, unless designated by a $.)

Please note: You will need to install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to read any .PDF forms.

Photos/Scrapbooking page