About Me…

Homeschooling wasn’t working out as I envisioned. I felt like a slave to the curriculum. Each day, I pushed myself and the kids through the lessons but ended up feeling like a failure whether we finished or not.

After 6 years of suffering schooling this way, I found new tools that helped me shift my mindset, cut the busywork from our day, and take the reigns of our homeschool, with confidence. Learning became more engaging, more effective, more enjoyable, and easier.

At NotebookingPages.com, I come alongside you, not as an expert, but as an experienced friend and homeschooler of over 20 years, to share what I’ve learned and the tools I’ve created to help you become a more confident, relaxed, and productive homeschooler.

Debra Reed

Mom of 10,
homeschooling for over 20 years
…and still counting!

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Our Story

Doom & Gloom of Homeschooling

Part 1 // Homeschooling wasn’t working out like I thought it would (or should). Each day was a struggle. It felt more like a to-do list instead of a blessing or privilege.

Our Story

3 Homeschooling MythS

Part 2 // The 3 homeschool traps that kept me from finding the freedom and confidence I desired for our homeschooling. These traps are our own doing and can keep us stuck for years!

Our Story

Victory over Busywork

Part 3 // I was no longer trapped by a method, a curriculum, or an ideal schedule. It was at this turning point that I took the advice of another homeschool mom.

Our Story

HOMESCHOOLING TIPS & FAQs

Your First Notebooking Experience

Please do not wait until you think you have everything figured out and you think you have all the right supplies to start implementing notebooking. Make the time and dig in with your kids! ...

What Do We Write and How Much?

Does writing have this effect on any of your children? As soon as you tell them to open their notebook, it begins. Their eyes bounce around like the ball in a pinball machine. It's impossible to focus on the paper ...

Our Language Arts Notebook

Notebooking topical studies like history, science, Bible, & even literature are easy to do. I get asked many times, "How do you notebook language arts?" ...

How much notebooking do you do each day in your homeschool?

We use notebooking to capture what we are learning and to practice our writing skills. Notebooking begins with engaging books, oral narration, and open-ended Socratic discussion. After all, you must have something to write before you can put pen (or ...

Can we use Notebooking for Math?

I had my annual eye doctor appointment last week. I wear glasses with special lenses to address a minor astigmatism, double-vision, and the ever-persistent presbyopia (aka I'm over 40 and can't see the fine print anymore). The lenses don't come ...

Bind your own notebooking with the ProClick Binding Machine

How to use the ProClick Binding Machine to bind your own notebooks

You can create your own sketchbook, planner, journal, or other type of notebook. You can also snip the spines to make smaller size notebooks like my kids' quiet time journals pictured below ...

Our NOTEBOOKING Story // video

I struggled with homeschool overwhelm for six years before I found our cure. The answer was not a new method, a better curriculum, or a more organized schedule. I'd love to share our story ...

How to do notebooking with younger children?

I do not start formal notebooking until my children are proficient with 3 skills. By "formal notebooking" I mean creating notebooks for specific subjects/studies that include written narrations, reports, summaries, etc ...

Notebooking with a Structured Writing Plan

It is less stressful for most kids to talk about a topic than to write about it. When beginning notebooking, I ask the kids for immediate oral narrations rather than a written summary or report ...

Homeschooling with Copywork

What is Copywork? Copywork is copying a piece of well-written work, from any variety of sources, onto paper or into a notebook ...

Testimonials

…my children LOVE looking through their notebooks frequently and I LOVE to see concrete evidence that they are learning.

I cannot even begin to say how much your site has changed my life! Sound melodramatic? Perhaps, if anything, it is an understatement! After homeschooling our 2 older children through middle and high school and then starting from the beginning with the three younger ones (9, 6, 3) I was feeling overwhelmed and stagnant. I saw my children getting bored and frankly, so was I. How was I going to keep this up? I began praying for God to inspire me with a way to teach my children that would bring fun back into learning and would, at the same time, give me confidence that they were learning what they needed to. It was within a week that I stumbled upon (through God’s grace and love for his struggling children like me) Debra’s website. Of course, I did my own homework and looked into several other sites offering similar services, but NONE of them offered what Debra does; and to be honest, I don’t know HOW she manages to do it! If I tried to make my own templates I’d be so frustrated! (and I have tried in the past) This site allows me to have access to everything I need for school and print it off quickly without feeling like I wasted my time at my computer…time that could be spent delving into books with my children and having fun. I LOVE the new publisher feature that will allow my children freedom to create their own unique pages as they get older. I have to be honest, when we first started notebooking it was intimidating and scary for me…I wanted to DO it RIGHT…but that’s the magic in this kind of learning: there is no RIGHT way! I just think of it now like a journal of all the things we like to talk about. Pictures, drawing, writing, etc…my children LOVE looking through their notebooks frequently and I LOVE to see concrete evidence that they are learning. THANK YOU, THANK YOU Debra Reed for all your hard work (so we don’t have to!) and your excellent product!

Rene Gilbertson

I was so thrilled to find a way to make sure they were retaining information, practicing their writing skills, improving their handwriting, all while having a good time.

I have 4 kids 8,8,4 & 3. When we started homeschooling 2 years ago I was so overwhelmed, trying to figure out how to make sure they retained what we learned. I was so thrilled to find a way to make sure they were retaining information, practicing their writing skills, improving their handwriting, all while having a good time. This was the answer! As I started notebooking I learning that even beyond being great for my 8 year olds, the little ones (4 &3) enjoying coloring, drawing and beginning their writing skills on the notebook pages as well! Now it’s a full family activity, and I am able to give each child a page that is at their level in the same subject! A total homeschool homerun!

Jen S.

Even my 15 yo, who isn’t required with the younger few, sat down and did notes!! Lots of notes.

I had heard about notebooking for years, but I just KNEW my kids weren’t that into taking notes. As we read history, for instance, I would mention things they needed to write down, and the response was moaning, groaning, and slow motion, then messy, if any notes. Last week, for science, I needed a skeleton page to label, and we had been studying the Explorers. I prayed, talked to my husband, and took the plunge. We purchased the notebooking membership to save my time. I immediately printed off an Explorers page, a map, and 2 explorers pages each. The pages were met with colored pencils, immediate attention, and almost excitement. Even my 15 yo, who isn’t required with the younger few, sat down and did notes!! Lots of notes. They were engaged, asked spelling, dates, and listened. The 6yo kept up with the others, and had the cutest notes ever!! I’m surprised, and SOLD on notebooking 😉

Chris

Notebooking is great for him, they aid with recall, memory and he really enjoys them.

Thank you for the Lifetime Membership offer it is very affordable. Our son had a stroke, causing long and short term memory. Notebooking is great for him, they aid with recall, memory and he really enjoys them. They are easy to adapt to his level yet are still challenging enough for him. Education has not been easy but with the help of your site he is interested, and it frees up a lot of my time. Again Thank you and God bless

Michelle Ice

Even my non-writer is doing written narration for the first time without complaining!

The pages have really inspired my kids to do well and be proud of their work. Even my non-writer is doing written narration for the first time without complaining! I’ve also found the maps to be a great resource, the timeline . . . It has all saved me so much time!

Keturah Janis in Ohio

…it has completely changed our school for the better.

We are loving notebooking! Let me just say it has completely changed our school for the better. Now the girls are really excited to “do school”. I was about to give up even though I knew it was what God wanted us to do. School was just drudgery. This has breathed new life into our home and days. How could something so simple provide such relief? If you can’t enjoy what you are doing, then, what is the point? We are so happy to be notebooking.

Amanda R in MS

…has inspired my children to learn, to explore, to be creative and to write!

What a blessing you are to so many homeschooling families! Notebooking is the answer to my prayers!

It seemed like our homeschool was lacking something. The workbooks were dry & boring or repetitive. I discovered your site a year ago, purchased a year membership & we started our notebooking adventure! We have slowly integrated it into our homeschool day & now we are ready to start using it with all of our subjects. It was hard to tell myself to put those workbooks & other materials we purchased out of site & stick with the notebooking. I can see the difference in my kids, they like school, they want to do more!

My children really enjoy being creative with their notebook pages. Notebooking is helping me to teach language arts to my children the natural way with out all the boring workbooks that sometimes bring tears. This method of homeschooling has inspired my children to learn, to explore, to be creative and to write!

My year membership just expired & I knew I had to purchase a lifetime membership this time around! I am looking forward to all of the awesome notebooks they will create in the future! The 3-D pages & the publisher look great! Purchasing a lifetime membership is one of the best investments we have made in our homeschool journey. Debra, thank you for all the love & time you put into this site to help the rest of us enjoy our homeschool journey!

Jenny K.

…we started using Mystery of History and Apologia Science and found that notebooking worked great with both of them.

We started out with just doing notebooking for small projects and for the occasional handwriting exercise. I used to think it was one of those areas that our family didn’t have time for or could afford. Then we started using Mystery of History and Apologia Science and found that notebooking worked great with both of them. I truly believe that my children have enjoyed both of those subjects more and have learned more than they ever would have if we had only followed the “traditional” textbook approach. Thank you for making the learning experience fun!

Lori S.

My only regret is waiting so long to become a lifetime member.

I have been using the “freebies” for some time. I have gotten a whole lot of mileage out of the lined papers and the science experiment papers. I have used several others as well. This is my 3rd year homeschooling, and although I use a curriculum, I use the pages to supplement what we are doing. In science, we use the experiment pages to take notes and create easy study pages. I use the history pages for the same purpose. However, I keep coming back to the site to find more pages as we advance in our studies. I am seeing so many exciting pages, for geography, anatomy, history that I kept longing for that weren’t freebies. I just jumped in today and purchased the lifetime membership, and my creative ideas are flowing. I can’t wait to use the pages in conjunction with our curriculum to enhance what we are learning, instead of just flying over the materials. My child gets excited about history, so now we can create a notebook of her favorite topics. The possibilities are endless! My only regret is waiting so long to become a lifetime member.

Kim

My children were becoming masters of the material we studied!

I wish I could remember how I was initially introduced to notebooking. I believe I Providentially stumbled upon this website for it has been the springboard for major changes in our home.

After almost a decade of homeschooling, I knew what I wanted our schooling to look like, but at the same time I knew it was looking less and less like my vision. When I discovered these notebooking pages, I decided to use the freebies offered to try it out with my children. They didn’t really notice a difference at first, so I began substituting some of our “independent” work with more notebooking pages. I was so pleased with the outcome. My children were becoming masters of the material we studied!

I was sold! I purchased the Notebooking Pages Membership during the Fall Sale and took advantage of the other bonuses offered. I asked for the Epi Kardia curriculum for Christmas and was again very pleased.

My children were not as optimistic as I was about starting “another new curriculum.” I was so pleased yesterday to hear my oldest son comment, “Is this what we’re going to do more of? This is really fun!” I am now spending time reading all those wonderful books with my children, exploring the volumes of creative notebooking pages for ways to express what we’ve learned, and sharing it all with excitement to Daddy when he comes home. What a blessing this has been for our family.

The key to our successful transition to notebooking was the wonderfully helpful emails that I received the first couple weeks after my registration on the website. Each email walked me through the process of incorporating these into our schooling. Without that I would have been too overwhelmed to know where to start. Instead it was an exciting process and a gradual (more permanent) transition.

Thank you again for blessing our family!

Deanna Hatfield in NC

About Me…

Debra Reed

DO YOU NEED HELP WITH YOUR HOMESCHOOL?

Our Story

HOMESCHOOLING TIPS & FAQs

Testimonials

All-Purpose Notebooking Pages