Tell Me How You Do Notebooking WTM style

[cintinative]

If this has been covered in another thread, please point me in that direction.

 

This is for my two boys, entering grades 4 and 5.

 

So far we have done SOTW 1-4 and a year of American History and this past year we dabbled in notebooking. Prior to that it was mostly oral stuff and coloring pages. My kids don't want to color for history anymore, and the idea of using a blank page in a 3-ring binder (which appears to be the suggestion in WTM) would probably not appeal as much as a notebooking page with pictures, etc.  I already know lapbooks are too much trouble for us--they dislike them and they are too much work for something they dislike.

 

So, those of you who do WTM style history, do you use notebooking pages? Do you have them do their outlines on the notebooking pages? Or do you just have them summarize on the notebooking pages? Or both? Do they summarize based on your narration or do they narrate to you, and then write it down?  If there is more than one book, do they do a summary based on all the books, or a summary for each book? (We are using several books as our spine for ancient history.)

 

FYI--we plan to do a separate timeline book (Book of Ages, Homeschool in the Woods) so I don't need to specifically cover that.

 

Thanks in advance for all your help!

[Eagle]

We do notebooking for many subjects, including history. We listen to the audiobook of SOTW and ds does a narration for each chapter. I scribe for him, then he copies it onto a notebooking page that I make. (He is in grade 2. By grade four we will probably skip the step of me scribing since he will have had a few years of practice by then.) Having him assist in creating the notebook page on the computer helps him to be interested in writing on it. He helps choose the picture(s), border, and title font. We usually do the narration and notebook page design one day, and the writing on it the next day.

 

We do notebooking for other subjects as applicable. He has done pages for science, math, nature studies, vocabulary, and social studies. We keep them all together in one binder separated by dividers for each subject. Some pages have one picture, some two. Sometimes I create a large open box for a diagram (especially in science). For nature studies I usually include a photo as well as a line drawing that ds can colour, in addition to the lines for writing.

[Eagle]

Here is one of ds' nature study pages:

 

Edited May 22, 2016 by Eagle

[Eagle]

Here is a history page:

 

Edited May 22, 2016 by Eagle

[desertflower]

We do notebooking for many subjects, including history. We listen to the audiobook of SOTW and ds does a narration for each chapter. I scribe for him, then he copies it onto a notebooking page that I make. (He is in grade 2. By grade four we will probably skip the step of me scribing since he will have had a few years of practice by then.) Having him assist in creating the notebook page on the computer helps him to be interested in writing on it. He helps choose the picture(s), border, and title font. We usually do the narration and notebook page design one day, and the writing on it the next day.

 

We do notebooking for other subjects as applicable. He has done pages for science, math, nature studies, vocabulary, and social studies. We keep them all together in one binder separated by dividers for each subject. Some pages have one picture, some two. Sometimes I create a large open box for a diagram (especially in science). For nature studies I usually include a photo as well as a line drawing that ds can colour, in addition to the lines for writing.

What a fantastic idea. Where do you get your borders? Are they from a template?

 

This is a great question.

 

Eta that I meant to say the op's question is a good one, not mine. Lol

[Eagle]

What a fantastic idea. Where do you get your borders? Are they from a template?

 

This is a great question.

I bought them from Teachers Pay Teachers. I bought two sets, but the one I use the most came with 450 borders. It is just the borders, not a template. I add the lines in my word processor (it is a one-cell-wide table with no sides).

[cintinative]

I think my boys would love creating the templates. I am just concerned about the time involvement. I can see my youngest taking 15 minutes to pick the font he likes.  =) I wonder if I could have them do it over the summer? Would I be an uber-uncool mom if I did that?

[desertflower]

Yeah, i have the same problem. I was thinking of doing some ahead of time as well. Just in case he wouldn't mind.

 

Or just have a few for him to decide upon.

 

I'm open for ideas on that situation as well. :)

[Eagle]

One reason we do the copywork the next day is so that making the template doesn't become a big time waster.

 

When I bought the 450 borders, I spent a few hours organizing them. Each border came as an individual file with a name like template001, template002 etc. I opened each file and quickly renamed it with whatever came to mind (triangles large, Greek, wavy with circles, mosaic, etc.). This reordered the files so similar ones were grouped alphabetically (such as triangles or wavy lines). I then copied each one to a word processor document, staggered them on the page and hand labelled each one on the page. This is hard to describe so I think I will post a pic. This took several pages to do, but now when we do a notebook page we can flip through a booklet of border choices. It saves a ton of time. I get my images from Google image, and I tend to narrow it down to two or three before letting ds choose which one.

 

In the beginning it took quite a while to do a page as it was new for me. I have saved each one, so now I open an existing one as a template (I edit a copy of one that is in the same format that I would like to do -- such as lined page with image in bottom right corner), change the border, edit the title (changing the font), and plunk in a new image or two. It takes less than five minutes, including choosing the border and image. It is completely worth the effort as ds is very proud of his pages and works hard on them.

 

I think it makes it fun for ds to select a border and picture that represents what he is learning. Doing them ahead of time means those choices would not be relevant because he wouldn't know the information yet, so his choices would be random. Part of his buy-in for notebooking is that he has some control over the page so it represents what he wants to say about the topic: his words, his choice of design, his chosen images.

 

Something you could do over the summer is organize borders and make some generic templates that you can edit with your dc's choices later. Practice making a few pages so it becomes a quick task to make a new page when needed.

[Eagle]

Here is an example page I made with the borders. Having similar ones grouped makes it easier to choose which one to use. I hand-wrote the file name next to each border after printing out the page so I could easily find the one I need.

 

[UCF612]

I was planning to incorporate notebook pages next year. I think I'll add organization of this to my summer to do list. Thanks for sharing what you do!

Edited May 23, 2016 by UCF612

[Eagle]

Here are a few more of my ds' pages so you can see different layouts in case you make your own templates:

 

 

 

 

[knitgrl]

I got a lifetime subscription to notebookingpages.com. I think it's $99, but there was a half off sale maybe a year and a half ago. For $50, it was totally worth it. She has everything the ancient Egyptians, bust of Romans, Mesopotamia, (can you tell we are working on SOTW Vol. 1?), science stuff, Bible stuff, just a lot that can be used for multiple kids for a lot of years.