Heart of the Matter has, for the last several years, hosted a “Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop. ” I love the Hop; it is a wonderful way to see the homeschool environment of tens–no, hundreds– of other moms. I’ve participated for a couple of years, but I chose not to this year. The fact is, not much has changed in the last 4-5 years. I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful that we experience a peace and comfort in that area that I don’t take lightly; I hear others who agonize over gaps between teaching methodologies and poor results.
In our home, the biggest changes for us are the books we’ll read. I posted our reading lists on a separate blog page that you can access by clicking on that tab up top. The other bit of preparation that must happen here is our notebook planning.
I could expand upon why notebooking is such a staple for us, but others say it more eloquently than I would. This is Barb’s post from Harmony Art Mom. Beyond the beautiful keepsakes that we have of the kids’ studies, I am amazed at the “pegs” that these notebooks place in the kids’ minds. By performing this type of written expression, the kids can recall a tremendous amount of history and science, and these have become interesting enough that they are options for higher level studies (i.e., college majors). I’ve posted some pictures and thoughts of the kids’ history notebooks here and here.
Our son will begin his first year of his Great Book studies in the fall. I pulled together a hybrid of previously bought notebooking pages from notebookingpages.com, and from Hold That Thought notebooking pages. (I apologize for the lighting and fuzziness on these pics–geesh!)
Amy Bayliss featured several posts on altering those black-and-white dollar store notebooks. You have to check out her most recent post how-to on creating a rolled paper flower. In the meantime, the first of three posts was here, instructing us in how to refurbish these babies. I thought this would be a great idea to build some scholastic enthusiasm in our youngest, who has decidedly different attitudes about home and school than her older brother and sister. As things would have it, the day I planned to work on this project, she got an offer to go and play with her cousin. Guess where refurbishing notebooks fell on that priority list? So I decided to go it on my own. I do wish my pictures did justice to how really pretty these came out. The before version is in the middle. Can you tell by the number of pictures how excited I am? Okay. This is the closest I’ve been to scrapbooking in 5 years or more. Give a lady a break.
And of course, I couldn’t forget the backs:
When the youngest returned home, she LOVED the notebooks. I think that she wanted to get started on her own more than she wanted to eat. I made her have dinner, which I think gave her more refurbishing energy!
I am officially pumped.
P.S. Thanks, Marcy, for reminding me to go back and add Amy’s links! Love my readers!
I love your notebooks. They came out really cute. I look forward to seeing how your year plays out.
Blessings,
Dawn
Belinda! I miss you sweet lady! Being offline for so long really made me appreciate all of you so much more!
I love the way your books turned out. These are so much more fun than the plain old black/white covers they come with. 🙂
love you!
Super cute notebooks! Good job on that.
I love the idea of notebooking and my oldest would do well with it, but my second can not handle it with his dysgraphia. He can give wonderful oral narrations, but does not transfer to writing.
Maybe it will work with my younger kids someday.