We started in the beginning of the school year note-booking as we learn.  We were using GatherRound homeschool curriculum (which I do love), but I was noticing stacks of units that we would finish and I just couldn’t keep all the student workbooks.  Some of the pages seemed like busy work and the kids didn’t seem to care to keep up with them (except for a few pages).  Instead, I decided to have them write things in their notebooks that we were learning about.   I printed off paper and they would write or draw pictures as we went through the units.        It worked! I saved those notebooking pages and kept them in a folder with the intention of putting them together later on.

I just recently took all the August through November school year things from those folders, and put them in a bound notebook.  In January, I purchased some beautiful notebooks from Jeanie Fullbright.  Each of the kids got their OWN color.  We decided to changed things up and read from quality literature instead of continuing with Gatherround. It wasn’t that their curriculum wasn’t quality. In fact, it was narrated very well. We just felt the quality literature was a better way to go for our family. The pages were blank in Jeanie’s notebooks, so they would draw lines to write. They would also glue in their special notebooking things.

We painted, used chalk, and drew directly in the journals.  Half way through the journals, we decided to SPLIT up the notebook into subject areas. Looking back now, I wish we had done this from the beginning.

When children notebook, they are gaining a stronger understanding of what they just read or heard. This increases retention and they will then hold onto that longer.  There are so many creative ways to notebook as well, not just writing paragraphs.

Instead of busy work, they create illustrations, written narratives, diagrams, photos of projects, articles, posters and many other fun creative notebook ideas.  We choose to do a lot of reading of good quality literature and notebook for the bulk of our homeschool time. Having a notebook to put everything in is a fun way for kids to “do school”.  My kids LOVE having something to FLIP through!

For the 2023-2024 school year I purchaced LEUCHTTURM1917 notebooks.  I got the B5 size and for Gideon and Annie Mae I chose to get LINED.  For Luke and Titus I chose to get the dotted.  I got SOFT COVER.  They have a few less pages than Fullbright ones.  I will see how these hold up.  I’ve been super happy with the A5 size ones for my bullet journals (another post coming on those).  I have been working on purchasing stickers that show “who they are” as a surprise for the first day of school (you know…. you always get new school things and for mine it will be a fun new notebook, that they can be proud of).

I got pen loops so they can put their pencil easily on the journals (we always loose pencils so this will be something they are going to really enjoy).   One especially fun thing you can do at the end of the school year is have an OPEN HOUSE and at the open house the kids can choose a couple things they are proud about and share them with Grandparents, Dad and older siblings.  The visitors can then easily flip through the school year and see all the work and ask questions of the kids.