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 pencil) to paper.
We read, narrate, and discuss most of our books each day… or at least one book per major study (Bible, history, literature, science, etc.). The amount of writing we do for our notebooks depends on the age, and more importantly, the writing ability of the child.
We follow this natural progression of writing:
Copywork -> Transcription -> Dictation -> Written Narration.
Once the child shows the ease of effort in one area, we move on to the next. We practice writing in this way every day with at least one of our major studies. Older students who can write narrations with ease will often write for multiple subjects each day.
Another question I’m often asked is:
How many notebooking pages do you do each day?
Generally speaking, our kids create a page a day for any study we are notebooking. If they have a longer narration, it may go longer than one page. Of course, notebooking isn’t limited to just writing, they may also add their own drawings, maps, coloring pages, copied diagrams, etc.
