- in How-tos , Tips by Jimmie Quick
Flashcards in Notebooks {50 Things Series}
There are at least 50 Things to Put in a Notebook. This blog series looks at each of them in detail, showing you tips for how to use that particular item and offering specific examples.
Fifty Things to Put into a Notebook: #6 Flashcards
Flashcards are a learning tool that never goes out of style. First, a student gets the benefit of making the flashcards. Then he can easily review and memorize facts by flipping though the cards. Then, the student can receive that most rewarding benefit of flashcards — removing cards from the pile to make a stack of mastered facts.
If your children use flashcards for learning, they can also be put into a notebook. Besides providing storage for the cards, putting them into a notebook makes the flashcards part of the child’s learning portfolio.
If you don’t normally use flashcards, consider them as an alternative to the traditional notebooking page. Sometimes a simple change in format or medium is enough to lend renewed interest to a homeschool lesson.
Hand your child some blank index cards (full size or cut in half) and let her narrate her homeschool lessons in flashcard format.
Storing Your Flashcards in a Notebook
One of my recent thrift store finds was a stack of page protectors with nine pockets. I assume these are designed for storing a collection of baseball or other trading cards. My homeschool mom brain started thinking of all the ways we could use these special page protectors for notebooking.
I realized they would be perfect for storing flashcards. The content on both sides of the cards would be visible. And these pocket page protectors do a good job of holding the cards securely so that there is little risk of cards flying out of the notebook like so many other storage methods.
When I looked on Amazon, I discovered that there are many different types of clear sleeves that you can use for notebooking flashcards and other small objects:
- 9 Pocket Pages (for trading cards)
- Business Card Pages
- 4 x 6″ Pockets (for photos, postcards, or index cards)
- 3.5 x 5″ Pockets (for photos, postcards, or index cards)
Imagine all the possibilities!
- art galleries with a different painting in each pocket for art notebooks
- biographical profiles for history notebooks
- poetic devices or poetic forms for language arts notebooks
- a cast of Greek gods and goddesses
- characters in a work of literature
I hope that the ideas in this series lend great creativity to your homeschool notebooking ventures. There is no reason for notebooking to ever become boring with the multitude of options you have.