- in How-tos , Q & A by Jimmie Quick
Q & A: What Curriculums Include Notebooking?
Q: What Curriculums include notebooking?
A: There are several: Winter Promise, Mystery of History, Beautiful Feet, Heart of Dakota, My Father’s World, Truthquest and Time Travelers.
Notebooking is a fairly common instructional method, and it’s becoming more and more popular. As evidence, see this list of curriculums (curricula) that have notebooking integrated into the plans.
The Mystery of History
All volumes of The Mystery of History by Bright Ideas Press have specially designed notebooking pages to go along with the history curriculum. These pages are PDF eBooks which you print out at home. The pages are a mix of subdued colors — black, gray, blue, and brown. There is great variety in the pages, including layout, line styles, and sheer number of pages. See a sample here.
Beautiful Feet
Although the Beautiful Feet website does not talk about notebooking, I can attest that each BF program does use notebooking on a daily basis. (I have used three of their curriculum packages.) There are no printable pages but there are notebooking assignments that tell you what to write, draw, or include in the student notebook.
Heart of Dakota
Every curriculum package from Creation to Christ level and up include notebooking. The pages are full color with layouts similar to scrapbooking pages. They are not reproducible but one time use, physical pages. You can see sample notebooking pages here.
WinterPromise
Notebooking is an integral part of Winter Promise’s history programs. In fact, the WP website has an entire page devoted to the notebooking approach. The pages are pre-printed, physical pages and are purchased as part of a curriculum package. They are heavy on text and images and leave little room for the child to write. In fact, I don’t consider them true notebooking pages at all. All pages are black and white and would be easy to photocopy for multiple children.
My Father’s World
MFW programs come with notebooking pages called Student Sheets. The Student Sheets are physical, pre-printed pages. Unfortunately, the website offers no samples of these student sheets, but the thumbnail on the website indicates that the pages are mostly black and white with a few full color supplements.
MFW curriculum also schedules weekly nature walks with notebooking (nature journaling).
TruthQuest History
The elementary level materials at TruthQuest incorporate a lapbooking-notebooking combination. The digital product is called Binder Builder; see a sample here. Print out the pages you desire from the PDF. The printables are simple black lines which are easy on printer ink.
(Thanks to Daisy for pointing me to TQ.)
Time Travelers History Studies by Homeschool in the Woods
Time Travelers studies are complete unit studies that cover a broad period of history. Time Travelers’ incorporates both notebooking and lapbooking, so there is a good mix for people who like creative layouts. The graphics are gorgeous, detailed, black and white line drawings. The material comes on a CD-rom, so all the notebooking and lapbooking components are reproducible. Print whatever and however many you need.
(Thanks to Kendra for reminding me of Time Travelers.)
If you know of another curriculum that incorporates notebooking either with notebooking pages or notebooking assignments, please let me know in a comment below. Also share your experience with the notebooking pages and assignments from the programs listed above.