Notebooking Supplies

Below is a list of general notebooking supplies to help you get started.

The bare necessities include:

1. Source of paper.
2. Writing utensil.
3. Somewhere to store your finished notebooking pages.

As you and your children become more acquainted with notebooking, you will find your groove and be better equipped to decide what supplies you want to use.  Whether you choose ready-to-go notebooking templates or to create your own with blank paper, keep the focus simple. If you turn notebooking into too big of a project, you get caught up in more busywork and that is not our goal. We simply want to help our children capture the knowledge they are exposed to each day so that they can hold onto it.

Notebook or Binder

• 3-ring binder
• spiral notebook
• composition book
• sketchbook
• scrapbook
• homemade comb-bound or spiral book (See the cool binding tool we use below!)

Paper

• plain copy paper
• colored paper
• printed papers
• scrapbooking papers
• heavy-weight papers
• cardstock
• lined paper
• construction paper
• photo papers for personal photographs

Writing & Art Utensils

• pencils
• pens
• fancy & fun-colored pens
• crayons
• colored pencils
• chalks
• pastels
• markers
• watercolors
• paints
• scissors
• glue
• tape and/or tape runner

Sheet Protectors (optional)

If you’re putting finished notebooking pages in a binder, you may want to invest in sheet protectors to keep the pages from being ripped out and crumpled up. Buy in bulk to get the best deal.

Special Scissors, Punches, & Borders

• paper trimmer
• fancy edging scissors
• hole-puncher
• corner/tag/ticket or other specialty punchers
• border templates

Other Decorative Items

• clip art
• internet images (try a Google “image” safe search)
• lettering stencils
• photos
• mini-book elements
• rubber stamps
• stickers
• brads
• eyelets
• ribbon or colored tape

Binding Tool

We LOVE the ProClick P50 Binding Machine and use it to create all sorts of notebooks for school, home, church, etc. In fact, we have now owned 2.  My husband uses his to bind portfolios for work presentations.

I purchased mine many years ago for around $40-$50.  The price varies from $70-$100.  You might find a better deal on eBay.

Click here for more information.

It only takes a few years of homeschooling to acquire mounds of crayons, markers, colored pencils, and the like. So how do we organize all of these supplies in our household?

With a large family, I found it best to keep as many supplies in one central location as possible. Each child can have their own school box with the bare necessities, but the rest is shared and kept in that central location.

Crayons

Each child keeps a newer set of crayons in their individual school box. The older crayons get recycled into one of our community crayon bins.

Colored Pencils & Markers

We have these sorted in powdered baby formula cans and cake icing containers by color families. A can for reds, yellows and oranges, blues, greens, purples, browns and blacks, etc. When needed, we put all the cans in the middle of the table in everyone’s reach.

Scissors, Paintbrushes, and Paints

Each child used to have their own scissors, but finally, these too became thrown together in one container. So we have an old pencil jar full of regular scissors and another full of our special-edged scissors. All paintbrushes are stored together in big coffee cans. Paints are kept in mom’s cabinet inside plastic containers.

Glues, Tapes, Punches, etc.

Each child has their own tape runner that they keep in their school box. The rest of our glues, tapes, punches, erasers, sharpeners, etc. are sorted in little baskets. I find it’s much easier to keep like supplies in one place rather than trying to keep up with each child’s individual supplies. Makes for faster clean up too!

Borders & Stencils

We have some fun scrapbooking border and cut-outs templates. These are easily stored in a binder since they come pre-punched. We also have some lettering stencils. We tuck these into the clear overlay of the binder to keep them from becoming bent.

Papers & Scraps

We use some old plastic bins to store our paper supplies and scraps.  One is used for full-size colored papers and the other stores our usable scraps. More expensive specialty papers are kept in stacking trays and kids need permission to use these papers.

Big Tools

Paper trimmer, 3-hole punch, stapler, and binding tools are all kept out in the open for easy accessibility.

 

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