Those of you who love to notebook for history and scienc....

[michaeljenn]

How do you go about this. I know that sounds like a dumb question.. but really what I mean is what do you have them do. For some reason, I feel like they have to have some glorious essay with each and every notebooking piece. I want notebooking to be fun though, and I know they will treasure their notebooks when they are older!!

 

So, tell me what you require in your notebooking pages, and how long it usuall takes, and how often??

 

I have thought about taking 1 day, and have a BIG notebooking afternoon..

I would put the names of the people/events, ect... that I want them to notebook about on the whiteboard, and we would just get all the supplies out and notebook our hearts out. But, would that seem overwhelming??

 

Also... I would love to see some pictures of YOUR notebooking pages:D

 

THANKS

[Dayle in Guatemala]

For History:

 

I use History Scribe notebooking pages on the time period we are covering. We read our pages for the day, discuss them, and then they get out their notebooks. Inside, I have a copy of the page that corresponds with our lesson. I make copies of some of the pages out of the Usborne books we use for them to cut out pictures or maps depending on what we're doing. They also write a brief synopsis of what we covered that day. About once a month, we take an afternoon for them to make a few collages of what we've studied (sometimes we use scrapbooking tools for this) and they include those in the notebook. At this time, I will also add pictures of them doing certain projects based on what we've studied (mummifying a chicken, making a cartouche, practicing heiroglyphs, etc.).

 

 

For Science:

 

I include their lab pages and any vocabulary they are studying in their notebooks. We do this daily too. They include drawings, charts, lab sheets, outlining, vocabulary, overviews of famous scientists, and their ideas on what we're studying. We also do the once a month thing too.

 

 

I tend to do it daily because it keeps the information fresh. I use the notebooks as a way to evaluate whether or not they've understood the lessons. The monthly day is to help me see if they are retaining and "connecting the dots" on what is happening in either subject.

 

I also have notebooks for them for Language Arts: spelling, vocabulary, charts of different components of language (punctuation, parts of speech, etc.), and writing.

 

Hope this helps!:D

[Baseballmom]

We have notebooks for History and Science. I just require a paragraph and a picture for each topic. For example, yesterday they wrote about comets, meteors, and asteroids and drew a picture for each. I do not worry about it being a wonderful piece of writing but that they understand the information.

HTH,

[mysticamethyst]

For history we use SOTW and History Scribe. I read the ch. for SOTW and during the story ask them to write down certain words. Like Eric the Red for example, or some misc. voc. words I want them to know. After we have done the reading, we do the mapwork, glue this to a piece of colored card stock or scrapbook paper, on the back of this is just plain lined paper where they have their definations for each ch. on another piece of colored paper is a drawing with important dates about Eric the Red. Again, my older ones would be required to right a very short paragraph about him as well as one important fact they remember. Then we punch holes in it and place in lg. 3-ring binder that they have decorated. I just love History Scribe, I have purchased several items from them and really enjoy them. They are great for making unit studies in my opinion.

 

Science is done the same way but I use a combination of Science Explorer and Great Science Adventures. I follow Science Explorer and use Science Adventures when I can. Pretty much follow what we do for history. Except instead of map work they have to draw and lable something from the ch. we are studing that week.

 

We also only do science and history on Tues. and Thurs. I will take some pix and post them in my blog if you want to look at them. They are really nothing fancy. HTH

 

Tammy

[mamato3 all-boy boys]

I look at our notebook as being a portfolio of my child's work in a subject for the year, so I include lots of different things:

 

....SOTW maps

....typewritten narrations I've taken of ds's summaries (sometimes one or two sentences, sometimes 6 or more, depends on him)

....handwritten narrations I've taken of ds's summaries

....his copywork of his own narrations

....pictures of projects we've done (building boats, mummifying GI Joe, Lego castles)

....coloring pages from SOTW AG or other resources

 

 

 

As for ds's narrations, sometimes I have to walk. him. through. every. step. in. at. a. painstaking. pace. Other times it just "clicks" for him. I'm looking through his history book from earlier this year... Here's what he said about Johannes Gutenberg:

 

Gutenberg was trained to be a goldsmith. He made a printing press out of a wine press. He had to figure out what type of metal to use for the letters. He also had to figure out what kind of ink to use. The first book Gutenberg printed was the Bible.

Most of the time, I end up saying a lot of, "What next?" or "Listen to this and tell me if this is good or if you want to add more." SWB's article on narration was very helpful to me (one of those things I need to pull out once and month and review for my own sanity as well as for the benefit of my children.)

 

I just purchased History Scribe for our US colonization studies; They look like nice pages, and I'm hoping it will challenge ds to want to do some more drawing, which is something he doesn't usually like to do.

 

We tend to do 1 notebook page for each of history and science per week. Sometimes we do two if there is somethings super important to write about. We use a separate timeline book to keep track of where we are in history.

 

If you go to my blog to the weekly reports, there are some pictures of work he's done that has been included in our notebooks.

 

HTH