- in How-tos , Tips by Jimmie Quick
Why Do You Notebook? Setting Goals
Notebooking is a tool in your supply of teaching methods, so it should be helping you to teach and helping your children to learn.
Consider why you notebook. What are your goals for using this method in your homeschool?
Here are my goals for my daughter’s notebooking:
- learning organization skills
- writing narrations
- practicing expository writing
- verbalizing mathematical concepts
- explaining scientific processes
- reinforcing recently read ideas
- creating a tool for reference and review
On my side of the equation, I find that notebooking helps me kill two birds with one stone in curriculum planning.
Since notebooking involves so much writing, a notebooking assignment can often “count” as whatever academic subject is covered plus a writing assignment. In fact, I don’t require my daughter to do a lot of “pure” writing assignments in language arts. Instead she uses the content in her other subjects — math, science, history, art, music, Bible — as the basis for expository writing. Two-for-one assignments make for smart time management.