Notebooking Blog
Welcome to our notebooking blog, where you'll find practical tips, stories, and encouragement to help you make notebooking a natural part of your homeschool.
Welcome to our notebooking blog, where you'll find practical tips, stories, and encouragement to help you make notebooking a natural part of your homeschool.
Last year I hit the wall in my homeschool journey. My children were frustrated and so was I. We were not having the educational experience any of us wanted. I shelved everything for a month and went back to the drawing board. I am incredibly grateful to have found your site while slogging through the difficult ordeal of revamping our homeschool. I looked through the entire site. I watched the intro video. (I suggest everyone else do the same!) I signed up for the Freebies account, because while it all looked very promising, I didnโt want to spend the money until Iโd tried this โnotebooking thing.โ Boy was I glad I did! I started a study of Chopin and Elephants with my children. They loved it! They loved the โneat pagesโ to write and draw on. My son who I couldnโt get to write three consecutive sentences, suddenly wanted to write everything heโd learned about elephants. They love using the notebooks I learned to make from the terrific โhow toโ articles that Debra has written. Suddenly, learning was enjoyable again. I have only one regret when it comes to notebooking, I wish I had known about your site sooner. I didnโt try notebooking earlier because it always sounded confusing and difficult. Debra and her wonderful site eliminated that concern. Iโm thrilled to have access to pages on every subject I could possibly imagine. Thank you for this wonderful site. It is more than worth the price of subscription!
I recently bought a membership and the way I homeschool has changed for the BEST! I am a four year homeschool mom who struggled trying to find a way to make learning come alive for my children (ages 4, 14, 17, 18). They are enjoying putting together notebooks. It allows for their creativity to flow and they can write down what they find interesting about a subject instead of someone forcing an interest on them. They also get to draw if they want or find pictures to place in the notebook. A lot of kids love to doodle! The membership saves me time by providing such nice pages. Notebooking has been such a success for our homeschool!
I just started homeschooling my 5-year old son for kindergarten this year. Iโm new to homeschooling, and we are going through a charter school โ so we are given a curriculum and assignments. But I have been frustrated with the curriculum and textbooks, and my son has been less than enthusiastic with the number of worksheets and โbusy-workโ and I was beginning to feel like I was killing his natural love for learning. Here I had this incredible child who is already reading on a 5th grade level, doing end-of-1st grade math, and yet he was starting to hate โschool.โ I felt like I was failing. I started researching online for other homeschooling ideas, and came across the whole notion of notebooking, and it immediately appealed to me. It seemed so much more flexible than the curriculum we were assigned now, and it seemed like my son would be actually learning more than when heโs just filling in blanks or drawing lines from pictures to words on worksheets.
My first trial was with one of the science notebooking pages. I printed the one with space for 3 pictures and then primary-lined writing area. We did a science experiment, and rather than just DO it, like we normally would have, after the experiment, I had my son draw pictures of the stages of the experiment and asked him to write a sentence about what he learned โ and he LOVED doing it!!! It made the whole experience SO MUCH more of a learning experience, and even though itโs been a couple weeks, heโs STILL talking about it! Even though he generally dislikes writing, he truly enjoyed that experience, and I hope to have many more like it!! Thank you for opening a whole new world to us!!
I have 4 kids ages 10, 7, 5, and 4. Two years ago we started lapbooking with most of our school subjects except math and phonics. We started lapbooking so that the kids could really make their own books with subjects that interested them. I knew though that as the kids got older that I wanted more than just cutting and pasting so we started adding more copywork to the lapbooks. It was a very natural transition to start notebooking. They now add their own artwork (one of the features I like with the notebooking pages is all the variety for clipart or blank spots for art work with lines for notebooking) Notebooking was a great way for us to journal and work through learning grammar skills in a practical way as well as practicing handwriting. Plus, this way the kids have personalized documentation of their work that we keep in a folder and they love to look over their work from each past year. I honestly wasnโt sure if notebooking would work for our family, but it has been so versatile with whatever we are covering from โrequiredโ subjects to ones of personal interest. The great thing is the little boys see the older two notebooking and they want to join in. My youngest just made his own journal book this morning to โwriteโ in. Love it when stuff like that happens. Thanks, Debra for all your hard work and making it so accessible too.
This is our go to site for all our notebooking needs. My daughter especially loves the Publisher. This site motivates her to want to create and learn. She is retaining more information than ever, and is even working above grade level. We discovered Notebooking within months of beginning our homeschool journey, I couldnโt imagine educating any other way. My daughter wouldnโt want to learn in any other way.
Though my daughter has always been a good student, she wasnโt an independent thinker when it came to learning, unlike her older siblings. She just read what she was told, answered questions at the end of a chapter, and took a test. Then we began homeschooling in 6th grade, now approaching the end of 7th grade, my daughter actually makes out her own schedule of what she wants to read and Notebook on, she has taken initiative in her own education. She now has an interest in History, Classical Music, Art, Literature, and chooses topics most kids wouldnโt.
Like you, I had preconceived notions of the โperfectโ homeschool education. I spent a great deal of money our first year on material she never even used. Then when I discovered notebooking, we invested in paper, art supplies, a comb binder, laminator and a library card. She is a happier student, I am a happier mom.
I think Notebooking should be an educational law. I apologize for my lengthy reply, but I have become not only passionate about Notebooking, but a huge advocate. Your site is easy to navigate, and offers a wide variety of subjects and topics. Though we follow a Charlotte Mason style curriculum, Notebooking truly will work with any style or methods of teaching.
100 unique notebooking layouts using a variety of borders and clip-art. Also includes 25 color border pages.
Notebooking pages with over 150 different border options and a wide variety of portrait and landscape layouts plus 3 line options for each lined page.