Notebooking Exhibit

This is what many people think of when they hear "notebooking page."

In fact, this is what I first think of as well: a black and white page with lots of lines and a graphic or two. The student writes what he learned on the lines and may color in the graphics or draw his own.

These kinds of notebooking pages are easy to find for free online. You can also buy sets of themed notebooking pages.

Free Online Notebooking Pages

• 
  The Notebooking Fairy offers free printable notebooking pages plus how-tos and tips.


• Homeschool Launch is a place where homeschool parents can upload files they have created. This link will take you to all files tagged "notebooking."


• Teacher Printables (look for writing paper, border paper, and background paper)


• Spirited Education gives away some very attractive notebooking sets. Each thumbnail represents a set of pages in several layouts.


• Consumer Help Web Notebooking Pages


• Christian Home School Hub's Notebooking Downloads

The Magellan page below came from Hold That Thought notebooking pages CD. The map is from Knowledge Quest.



Here is a Thomas Jefferson page that I created.



Commercial Notebooking Sites (that also offer freebies)

• CurrClick is a great resource for finding affordable notebooking pages. Many of the publishers are ordinary homeschool moms who offer sets of pages at very minimal cost. And many of the bigger companies (like Notebooking Pages, History Scribe, and Notebooking Nook listed below) sell through CurrClick as well.



• Notebooking Pages
  This site also has a great page showing different types of notebooking pages. Debra divides them into two types --templates and homemade.Be sure to read a review of Notebooking Pages products at The Curriculum Choice.


• Notebooking Nook
  Lots of history pages, but also science, language arts, and Bible.





• History Scribe notebooking pages appeal to a child who likes to draw. Read my review of History Scribe at The Curriculum Choice.





• Homeschool Notebooking offers Bible, holidays, history, biographies, and composers notebooking sets at modest prices.
  

Another type of notebooking page would have text already printed on the page. The student illustrates the page with his own drawings. The examples given are from Winter Promise American Story 1 curriculum. This style of notebooking is especially good for younger students for whom writing is a real chore.

History Scribe pages (from Westvon Products) have room for both pictures and text. In fact, all they have at top is a topic and short introductory blurb. You can see the example below. I printed it onto colored paper for more variety.

Currclick has the best prices on History Scribe sets. The best deals are the bundles.

Another kind of notebooking page is one that documents a 3D craft. Most children love making paper crafts and other messy projects. But long-term storage is always an issue. A great solution is to photograph the product and put the pictures onto a notebooking page.

To the right you can see the original craft, a pueblo village, that we wanted to document.

Sometimes you may have some elements of lapbooking in a noteboook. Here is a minibook about Zuni pots. Instead of putting it into a lapbook, we mounted it onto a piece of cardstock for our Native American Indian notebook.

Any minibook can be mounted into a notebook in this way. In fact, the entire lapbook could be put into a notebook. Visit this homeschool mom's creative method of doing so using duct tape!

Some 3D crafts can actually be reassembled to fit into a notebook. This diorama (pictured below) is a great example. After enjoying the project for a week or so, I give my daughter a piece of cardstock for mounting the craft. The now 2D images can be neatly filed away in the three ring binder.

Other really easy things to add to a notebook are coloring pages and maps.

A really great coloring page site is EduPics. Most of the coloring pages there are high quality and of great educational value.

World Atlas is my favorite map site because it has almost any type of map you could want!

You can use real things in your notebooks too; it will make your notebook more similar to an old fashioned scrapbook.

Examples include

• postcards


• artwork


• brochures


• feathers or hair from animals


• pictures cut from magazines


• photographs from field trips

Postcards of the Mayflower and Plymouth, MA.


Here are pages my daughter created after a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN. She used postcards that we got on the field trip.

For mounting these things in your notebooks, you need a method that will hold things in place without damaging them and allow them to be taken in and out.

We have used

• page protectors


• clear zipper top bags


• photo corners

A "Wanted Poster" for Robin Hood.

A paragraph about Jamestown, VA.

This shows a cartoon styled diagram that my daughter drew to help us keep track of all the different names used during the American Revolution -- Torries, Whigs, Rebels, Yankees, Redcoats, etc.

And another postcard page, this time Philadelphia.

Any subject at all! Look at these examples.

Composers from your composer study and art from your artist study:



Science notebooking is easy! But don't neglect math notebooking:



Copy poetry into a poetry notebook and do Bible notebooking too:



Of course you know you can make history notebooking pages:

If you like what you see in this notebooking exhibit and want to learn more about how to best use notebooking in your homeschool, Notebooking Success is a wonderful guide.

Written by a homeschool mom who has used notebooking for many years, Notebooking Success shows how to use notebooking to promote learning and retention. There are specific suggestions for different grade levels and for using notebooking with several styles of homeschool.