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

• 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)



• Peakmore Academy has lots of great printable notebooking pages too!



• Consumer Help Web Notebooking Pages

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)

• Notebooking Nook







• Notebooking Pages
  

  This site also has a great page showing different types of notebooking pages. Debra divides them into two types --templates and homemade.

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.

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: