I would be remiss as the Notebooking Fairy if I didn’t tell you about the Facebook party going on tonight with NotebookingPages.com and a lot of other incredible homeschool groups and companies. There are going to be hundreds of dollars worth of prizes, so please drop in to enter.

Tuesday night, May 21

9-10 ET/ 8-9 CT/ 7-8 MT/ 6-7 PT

RSVP here

A reader asked these questions about storing notebooks.

1. Do you keep your daughter’s notebook from previous years, and if so, how do you decide when to discard them?

2. Where do you store all of your notebooks?

I already do some notebooking with my children, and I’m a big fan of the old three ring binder even for medical records. But with five children, you can run out of room quickly if you don’t set some sort of guidelines.

These are the kinds of practical questions that I love to tackle at The Notebooking Fairy. Organization is such an issue, isn’t it? In fact, the one Pinterest board that most every woman has in common is one for organization.

Notebooking at its core is a way for students to organize the concepts from their homeschool lessons. Wouldn’t it be ironic if this mental organization caused physical chaos in the home?

Too Many Notebooks

I have only one child so quantity was never a huge issue. In fact, we are able to have different binders for each academic subject.

But that is not practical if you have many children. You would need a whole wall just to store the binders! In that case, you probably want one or two binders per child in which you organize the different academic subjects.

Where to Put the Notebooks

As far as shelf space, I have lived in many different situations ranging from small apartments to roomy houses. We even spent some time living out of hotels and guest houses while our belongings were in storage, so I have learned to be flexible with homeschool notebooks. Sometimes we stored pages in manila folders until we could get access to our notebooks that were packed away.

When we left China, we couldn’t take all the years of my daughter’s lapbooks and notebooks. It was all left behind. I was saddened not to have records of all her work, but the real value of notebooking is not in the collection but in the creation. There is certainly value in looking back at previous work. But the primary goal of notebooking is to narrate what was learned or experienced in a homeschool lesson.

That means that if the notebooks are lost, destroyed, or thrown away, the work is not in vain. The value remains. Learning happened.

Of course, I had documented much of my daughter’s work with photographs that are stored online. Because I had those  reminders, the loss was not as severe. However, if I had my way, I probably would have kept all of her notebook work through the years.

If it is hard for you to throw things away but you really need to for space considerations, you could always photograph or scan work and store it digitally.

We normally had a shelf devoted to homeschool books, and the notebooks had a spot with them. We don’t always file things into notebooks each day. Sometimes we gather various pages over the span of a week or even longer and then sort everything into appropriate notebooks all at one time.

Culling the Work

If you need to be ruthless about storage, I suggest regular periods for culling work. The end of a school year is an obvious time. But if that still leaves too much paperwork to handle, move the culling task to each semester or even every nine weeks. When you take this approach, a homeschool notebook becomes more of a portfolio of the very best work, and the rest can be thrown away.

The culling process is a great time to see what progress has been made. You can also discuss what criteria to use as you let your children help with the decision making process.

Digital Notebooking

One alternative to storing notebooks is to go the digital route. Let your children create pages with desktop publishing software or use the The Notebooking Publisher™ at NotebookingPages.com.

If you are looking for a source of hundreds of printable notebooking pages, all organized neatly online, consider NotebookingPages.com’s lifetime membership. You will never have to worry about organizing printed pages or even digital files because your printable pages are safely accessible online, ready to retrieve whenever you need them.

During the 7th Birthday Sale-A-Bration from May 8th – May 31st, you can save $25 on a LIFETIME Membership plus get one of these fantastic bonuses to The Notebooking Publisher™

… purchase by Friday, May 10th to receive 2 years FREE access
… purchase by Friday, May 17th to receive 18 months FREE access
… purchase by Friday, May 24th to receive 15 months FREE access
…purchase by Friday, May 31st to receive 12 months FREE access

New and existing LIFETIME members can enter to win these prizes.

• an iPad mini (1 winner)
• $100 Amazon.com Gift Card (2 winners)
• LIFETIME access to The Notebooking Publisher™ (3 winners)
• LIFETIME membership to MomsToolBelt.com (5 winners)

Visit  NotebookingPages.com to take advantage of these deals.

Welcome to the Notebooking Round-up, a list of the latest and greatest notebooking links on the web.

Show Me How It’s Done

Teaching How to Notebook

Lapbooking by Carmel Hillbillies offers a nice pictorial introduction to lapbooking, the near cousin of notebooking.

Five Reasons to Love Notebooking (#4 is my favorite!)

Mapping through US Victory in WW2 shows how maps work in history notebooks.

Jen tells how she uses notebooking with Heritage History curriculum.

Stephanie at Harrington Harmonies has an outstanding Pinterest board devoted to nature notebooks.

Amber Flinn has a homeschool notebooking board that I am now following on Pinterest.

I Want Notebooking Freebies

Circulatory System notebooking pages

Washington Irving notebooking pages

Printable creative writing prompt (from WriteShop)

Poetry Notebooking Pages (free with sign-up)

You have landed on the monthly Notebooking Round-up here at The Notebooking Fairy. Welcome!

All month long I collect the best notebooking links and save them for the first Friday of the new month in a post I call a round-up. You can see all of the round-ups here.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Notebooking Inspiration and Tools

Online tools that help you organize events and people in their correct time order.

10 Ways to Use Notebooking

It appears that this series is still being written. If the first post — Tips for Getting Started– is an indicator, you will want to read all of these posts.

What is Notebooking, a video by Debra Reed of NotebookingPages.com

A Notebooking board on Pinterest by Anne Shannon

Notebook/lapbook ideas Pinterest board by Donna Mathesius Tapp

Lapbook, Notebook, and Scrapbook tips by Homeschool in the Woods

Top Ten Reasons I Love Lapbooking

Most of these reasons apply to notebooking as well.

Why We Still Lapbook 

Amy explains her use of lapbooks in her middle grades son’s homeschool experience.

Handel Notebooking examples

This weekly wrap-up post includes great examples of notebooking for composer study.

Free Printable Notebooking Pages

Free periodic table of elements notebooking pages.

Vice Presidents of America free notebooking pages

Exodus notebooking pages

Animal notebooking pages (includes photograph examples of these used for gorillas and squirrel monkeys)

Credits: thanks to Benimoto for the great round up photo

(photo credit by Tilemahos_E)

Today we have Judy Hoch in the spotlight.

Judy blogs at Contented at Home. Follow her on Twitter @judyhoch.

Judy, when did you start notebooking?

We got our first taste of notebooking about two years ago when Kaylee and Keaton were 12 and 10. The two of them were studying Pennsylvania history and I found a wonderful notebooking-based course for them.

Because this course suggested a purchased state notebook and included most of the materials, we were able to begin notebooking without a lot of pre-planning or stress. Both children enjoyed the course, and I was thrilled with how much they learned without worksheets and busywork.

How do you use notebooking now?

Kaylee and Keaton are using notebooking along with their Mystery of History studies this year. Since neither of them enjoys hands-on activities, notebooking is a practical tool for reinforcing what they have learned. After reading the lesson, each child completes a notebooking sheet independently, recording the most important or most memorable facts from the lesson.

Each child also maintains a timeline notebook, adding newly-covered people and events about once each week. All of their notebooking pages are filed behind the corresponding timeline pages in a three-ring binder, making it easy for them to review what they have learned throughout the year. I have made our timeline pages available for free on my blog.

What is your favorite thing about notebooking?

I love that notebooking is a truly personalized learning experience for our children. It is fascinating to see that each child brings away something different from the same history lesson.

What are your best notebooking tips?

We quickly discovered that ordinary adhesive methods just don’t work very well for our timeline notebooks. As the pages begin to fill up, the children sometimes decide to move the timeline figures to fit more on the page.

We opted to ditch the glue sticks in favor of a Dotto repositionable tape runner (affiliate link). Often used in scrapbooking, this nifty tool allows the figures to be re-positioned as many times as necessary without damaging either the page or the timeline figure. Any adhesive residue can be easily removed with a fingertip.

How do notebooking pages enhance learning in your homeschool?

Not only do notebooking pages reinforce learning from a specific lesson, but they also provide a natural way to practice writing skills. With consistent notebooking, students develop their ability to use proper grammar and punctuation in their writing.

What kind of notebooking pages do you use?

I make our notebooking pages using the History Through the Ages timeline figures (affiliate link) for illustrations. The same images are used for the children’s timeline pages.

How do your notebooking expectations vary for different aged children?

I try to base my expectations on the child’s experience. For example, my sixth-grade son struggled with remembering to indent his paragraphs, so we focused on that for a time. My eighth-grade daughter has a lot more experience writing, so we worked on developing more advanced punctuation skills.

I generally do not use notebooking as an intense writing project. Rather, I try to focus on one or two skills that a child needs to develop and require corrections only in those skill areas. My goal in notebooking is to keep writing fun while helping my children learn.

Thank you, Judy for this peek into your homeschool use of notebooking. It was very instructive!

If you would like to be featured in the notebooking spotlight, please send me an email. I can send you a questionnaire.

The one thing you can be sure of about blogging and social media is that it is constantly in flux. As a blogger, it can be exciting to try out new platforms, but also exhausting trying to keep up with all the changes. Today’s post is a logistical one not about notebooking at all but about how you can stay in the loop with the pixiedust here at The Notebooking Fairy. There are three options below, listed in order of most reliable to least reliable. You may even want to use multiple ways of being notified when I post new printables or inspiration here.

1. Subscribe to Notebooking Fairy via email.

I am moving my email subscription from Feedburner to Aweber. The only downside for you is that if you were already subscribed to my email feed, you will very soon be receiving an email that asks you to opt in again. I apologize about that inconvenience. But it’s the law. And besides that, I want to be sure that you still want to see me in your inbox. So when you get that email, please opt back in to my email updates.

I’ll be shutting down the Feedburner service eventually, but there could be a few duplicates as we get things worked out. I’m sorry about the jumbled mess as we adapt.

If you have not been getting email updates but would like to, you certainly can. Just sign up with the box in the sidebar on any page here at The Notebooking Fairy. Or click the image at the top of this post.

2. Subscribe via Feedly

Did you hear that Google Reader will be defunct as of July 1? Although I was a loyal Google Reader fan, I have found a very good alternative –Feedly.  It is free to use and has both iOS, Android, and Kindle apps. But you can use it online as well.  My favorite part about using the iOS app is that little button that says remove clutter. Ahh… it leaves just the content of the article without any distractions. Bliss.

To find this blog in Feedly, look for add content in the left hand column. Just type in Notebooking Fairy, and you will find me.

3. Subscribe via Bloglovin

Bloglovin is another online readers similar to Google Reader and Feedly. Follow The Notebooking Fairy with Bloglovin.

Three of my favorite features in Bloglovin are

1. daily digest emails of headlines from all the blogs you subscribe to
2. suggestions of similar blogs to follow
3. iphone app

4. Follow via social media.

This is not a very reliable method unless you hang out on social media 24-7. But it is a great way to catch snippets when you have a few spare moments. So feel free to follow me on Facebook and Twitter where new posts are automatically broadcast.

Even less reliable methods would be following me on Pinterest or Google Plus. I love those platforms but often forget to share my own blog posts there!

Whatever methods you choose to keep in touch with me here at The Notebooking Fairy, I want to thank you for being a loyal reader. It means so much to me.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

The free printable notebooking pages in this post were created by a reader, Sunshine Connor. She is a homeschool mom, but she doesn’t blog. She kindly sent these pages to me to share with all of my readers. She says these are her first foray into creating pages, but they look fantastic!

Click the images to download the PDF file with five different layouts (only four of them are pictured). These are generic notebooking pages that work well for any topic or level of learner.

Thanks, Sunshine for shining some notebooking generosity into our day!

You have landed on the monthly Notebooking Round-up here at The Notebooking Fairy. Welcome!

All month long I collect the best notebooking links and save them for the first Friday of the new month in a post I call a round-up. You can see all of the round-ups here. I search for posts with photos examples, free printable pages, and how to videos. If it deals with notebooking, it is likely to end up here in the Notebooking Round-up. Enjoy the links for this month. And if I missed something, please let me know in a comment or email.

Free Printables

Gregor Mendel notebooking page

notebooking through the states

printable rock observation chart

Free spring poetry copywork pages 

I love Colleen’s idea of a quotation notebook. And she starts us off with a great one by Einstein about imagination. (free printable)

aquarium notebooking pages (free with sign up)

Robert Fulton (inventor of the steam engine) notebooking page and mapping page

Egyptian deities –9 different Egyptian gods and goddesses with color illustrations and space for writing

Notebooking pages for the Inuit and Arctic Circle (art, culture, animals)

Notebooking Ideas

From a classroom setting, but still worth a look

• math notebooking
• science notebooking

I love Jamie’s post about notebooking with fact fans.

Credits: thanks to Benimoto for the great round up photo

You have landed on the monthly Notebooking Round-up here at The Notebooking Fairy. Welcome!

All month long I collect the best notebooking links and save them for the first Friday of the new month in a post I call a round-up. You can see all of the round-ups here. I search for posts with photos examples, free printable pages, and how to videos. If it deals with notebooking, it is likely to end up here in the Notebooking Round-up.

Links with Free Printable Notebooking Pages

high school level poetry notebooking pages

Journey North tulip planting project has lots of printable pages for nature journals.

bible study notebooking page for elementary learners (works with any passage)

free printable notebooking pages of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, perfect for Presidents’ Day

Amelia Earhart notebooking page plus mapping page

Civil War in Kansas — Not only does Aadel share how she integrates notebooking into this history topic but she also shares some free printables.

sacrament of baptism (Catholic) notebooking page

Continuing Education about Notebooking

Charlotte Mason and notebooking — a forum discussion

the basics of notebooking by Paige Hudson

a great example of math notebooking

a fun Pinterest board called In Love with Flips, Foldables, and Notebooking

Barb explains how her fine arts curriculum implements the notebooking method.

A little gimmicky, but if you like this kind of thing, check out these notebooking pages on the parts of a cell, done in the shape of a cell phone.

Printables for Mom’s Notebook

analyze your homeschool with these mid-year evaluation forms

Credits: thanks to Benimoto for the great round up photo

Q: How should I plan a notebook?

A: Maybe not at all.

I don’t know that you need to plan a notebook. I don’t have this kind of thinking when organizing our homeschool. I don’t have a mental image of what the completed notebook will look like a the end of the year. I just let it happen organically.

I do think in terms of planning what printable pages we might need and any additional supplies such as page protectors. I sometimes consider the list of 50 things to put into a notebook to maintain variety.

But I also give a lot of ownership to my daughter, so sometimes her notebooking preferences may be different from what I planned. I have put plenty of printable notebooking pages into the recycle stack because Miss Creative had her own plan.

Notebooking is part of my weekly homeschool scheduling. I choose possible lessons to notebook and write that into my daughter’s assignment list, keeping to the grade appropriate guidelines that I outline in Notebooking Success.

My fear is that if you start “planning” your child’s notebook, it is no longer his notebook. It’s a binder full of assignments you gave him. So I would encourage a mom who is asking this question to plan notebooking time on the schedule, but not try to plan in extreme detail what the notebook will actually look like.