Video Tutorial - How to Create Cover Pages

This video shows how to add cover pages to your notebooks.

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Video Tutorial - How to Make Primary-Lines

This video tutorial shows how to add primary-lines to your notebooking pages.

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Video Tutorial - How to Add Arrows to Notebooking Pages

This video tutorial shows how to add arrows to your notebooking pages. Arrow are great to use when adding diagrams for your child to label.  

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Narration - The Cornerstone of Notebooking

One of the most common questions for those who are new to notebooking is about narration. The questions most asked vary from what is narration?, when should I start?, how can I use narration with a young child?, and how can I get my child to focus? All of these are good questions and I will explain to you how I've used narration with my children to answer these questions.  First, I want to say that narration is literally the cornerstone of notebooking. 

What is narration? 
Narration is the telling back of information from a piece of literature, a non-fiction book, or any form of media.  Depending on your child's age, you would read aloud or have them read and tell back what they learned from what was being taught or the events that took place. This 'telling back' can be written or spoken aloud.
An important thing to remember as you read to your child is to only read the passage once. This will teach your child to pay very close attention to what is being read.

When should I start narration with my child?
As long as your child is old enough to tell back what you've read to them, they are ready for narration. My youngest was about 3 years old. She was not able to write yet, so I did the writing for her and we would put her words into her notebook.

How can I use narration with my young children?

When my children were young, I would read stories, passages or a paragraph or two and ask them to tell me what we read. As they were explaining to me what we read, I'd write or type out their narration. We would then add their narration to their notebook, as I mentioned above. As they got older and were beginner writers, I would still write or type it out for them however, at this point, I would have them choose the main idea or most important parts of their narration. This was a good exercise for them to begin finding the main idea of the story as well. I would then write that portion on primary-lines with a highlighter for them to trace over. This allowed them to practice handwriting skills using their own words from their narrations. We kept these short so they wouldn't tire too quickly or become frustrated. 

How do I get my child to listen closely?

As your child is listening to you read aloud or is reading quietly to himself, he knows he will be required to narrate, so he is paying close attention to what is being read - most of the time. Not all children are going to pick up on this method quickly, in fact, some of my children took some time to work it out, but in time, they all did. Concentration is really the key. Some children have a difficult time focusing, so reducing the amount of distractions for some children is important. My boys had the hardest time with narration. When they were young, I found allowing them to use their hands allowed them to hear what was being read more easily.  In other words, legos, drawing, tracing and those sorts of activities may help some children be still and pay closer attention. Also, I only allowed that one thing they were doing to be out. I found that too many things laying around the desk or tabletop made for more distractions.  Honestly, it took me a while to get used to allowing my kids to do these things while I was reading, feeling that they weren't paying attention to me. However, when their narrations became much better, I realized they needed something to do with their hands in order to be able to focus better on the words I was reading aloud to them.

Now that all my children read well on their own and have been narrating for many years, it really does come very natural for them. They are all very articulate both in writing and speaking. I believe much of this has to do with the skills they've learned using narration.

Articles and Blog Posts You May Find Useful
The Charlotte Mason Method of Narration from Simply Charlotte Mason
Narration - Tapping into the "Talking Resource" by Karen Andreola 
Narration and Notebooking Part 1 from Our Busy Homeschool
Narration Ideas from Simply Charlotte Mason
Narration from Jimmie's Collage

Programs that Teach Narration Skills

Here are a couple writing programs that I have looked at closely and would recommend to help you with teaching your child to narrate if you are feeling unsure about how to approach this method.

For Younger Students
Writing with Ease by Peace Hill Press

For Middle School
Writing with Skill by Peace Hill Press

Please leave a comment with things that have worked for you or any other suggestions that may help new notebooking parents. Thanks!

ABC's of Notebooking and Lapbooking

Whether you're new to notebooking and lapbooking or have been using them for years, it's nice to see others ideas and perspectives on how they approach these great learning tools.

With that said, I'm putting together a list of MY ABC's of Notebooking and Lapbooking and will, over time, add posts to go along with my list. We all do things differently and there is no right or wrong way to approach these methods. Below are things we've added to or additional methods we've used to go along with our notebooks and lapbooks over the years. I hope some of the things listed below will be helpful to you as well as the posts I'm working to add to my blog.

My kids are older now (4 graduated and 2 I still homeschool who are 13 and 16) and we mostly use electronic notebooking (which is on the list) but we've been notebooking for about 7 years now. Sadly, all of their early work was destroyed in a house fire, but I do have some from the last couple years that I'll be sharing. I've been terrible about adding what we do in our homeschool and I'd like to change that - hence this list to give me some direction :)


I don't have a word for each letter yet, but at some point I hope to have more added. Be that as it may, other letters will have several words and I'll be adding more as they come to mind.


My ABC's of Notebooking and Lapbooking:

• A - Artwork 
• B - Biographies, Book Lists, 
• C - Copywork, Charts, Collages, Currency  
• D - Diagrams 
• E - Embellishments, Electronic Notebooking Pages - (I will be adding a tutorial to this post soon)
• F - Flashcards, Flags
• G - Graphs 
• H - 
• I - Illustrations, Interviews, Inventions
• J - Journal Entries
• K - 
• L - Lyrics to Songs and Hymns, Lab Reports, 
• M - Maps, Mini-books
• N - Narration
• O - Organizers (pre-writing graphic organizers) and Outlines
• P - Postcards, Photos
• Q - Quotes
• R - Recipes, Reviews (books and movies) and References
• S - Scriptures, Stickers, 
• T - Timelines
• U - Unit Studies
• V - Vocabulary
• W - Writing 
• X - eXperiments  
• Y - 
• Z -

If there is anything you've added to your notebooks that you'd like to share, please leave a comment with that info or a link to your blog post about it.

Video Tutorial - Life Cycle Notebooking Pages

Today I've added just one page to our honeybee notebooking pages... the live cycle of the honeybee. In the tutorial I've added a few more features if you choose to use Power Point to create notebooking pages.

• Adding Shapes
• Rotating
• How to set your margins - if you choose to change them. Power Point's default margins are the perfect size for your notebooking pages.

Below are the links to the video tutorials that go along with this honeybee series.

• How to make a basic notebooking page using Power Point
• How to create a plan for your notebooking unit
• Video Tutorial for making vocabulary pages

I hope these tutorials are helpful for some of you. If you have any questions or comments please let me know and I'd be happy to answer them. 

Click here to see all the video tutorials in one post.

Video Tutorial - Vocabulary Notebooking Pages

We're adding a couple more pages to our honeybee notebooking pages.  Today we will be adding 2 vocabulary pages. I will be showing you in this video how to use some of the following features in Power Point...

• A couple features in WordArt
• Resizing shapes and images
• How to make an image transparent
• How to delete entire sections from your page with one click
• How to copy and paste several items on one page at one time

The website I used for the clipart for these pages is wpclipart.com and it offers public domain images... FREE! :)

In my next tutorial we will be making a page for the life cycle of a honeybee. I will be showing you some different features using Power Point to create that page. 

Below are the links to the video tutorials that go along with this honeybee series.

• How to make a basic notebooking page using Power Point
• How to create a plan for your notebooking unit

I hope these tutorials are helpful for some of you. If you have any questions or comments please let me know and I'd be happy to answer them. 

Click here to see all the video tutorials in one post.

How I Create a Plan for our Notebooking and Lapbooking

Keeping with our honeybee theme, I've put together another video of how I create my plans to go along with some of our notebooking studies. I've shown you how to create a notebooking page using Power Point 2008, but if you don't have a plan, sometimes it's difficult to know what to do with all these pages.

After the video I'll add the plan I have so far in a Word doc. so you can add to the plan or change it up some. I'll also write out how I plan my studies under the video.

Click below to open the Honeybee planner

Honeybee Planner Word.doc

Here's a list of the things I do to prepare for our units:

• Go to the library and check out books about our topic. I use these books to find vocabulary words and sub-topics for our study.
• I look up websites that will be useful during our study and link to them from my Word Document.
• I find books I'd like the kids to read during the study. I will most often have them read a living book. If you are unfamiliar with the term 'living book', here is a website that will explain it to you.
• If we were studying something from history, I'd put together a timeline of events.
• Again, if we were studying history, I'd find maps that would go along with our study, such as, battles, boundaries, exploration, and that sort of thing.
• Depending on our study, I may add many other things, such as charts and diagrams... the list is quite long. In fact, here's a list Jimmie put together of 50 Things to Put in a Notebook. It's a great list and we've added many of the things on her list to our own notebooks. 

Now, as I mentioned in the video, remember that the vocabulary list can also be used as a reference list to create an independent notebooking page or lapbook element for that word. It's great to have a list of words to look back on and study but in my opinion (and it's just that, my opinion) it's even better to have a page to help remember the word.

So there you go.... We will continue to make notebooking pages about honeybees now that we've got a plan to follow. I'll be adding 1-2 videos a week (as time allows) until I feel we've covered several sub-topics (please leave a comment if there is something specific you think we should add).  After we've finished with the notebooking pages, we'll start a new topic and I'll show you how to create a lapbook.

Please leave a comment telling my other readers how you plan for your notebooking studies. If you have a blog post, please leave the link! The best resources come from other experienced homeschooling moms. Thanks!

Click here to see all the video tutorials in one post.

How to Make Notebooking Pages Video Tutorials

I've had lots of requests over the years asking how I make notebooking pages and what program I use. I use Power Point 2008 to create my notebooking pages. I have an Apple computer, however,  I'm sure that many of the features they use are the same on a PC.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know. I hope you enjoy the tutorial. I have more I'll be making for you soon :)  You can download the finished notebooking page at the bottom of this post.

If you'd like to make changes to the notebooking pages you can

Download the powerpoint file here

Video 1: How to Make a Basic-lined Notebooking Pages

Video 2: How I Create a Study to go Along with My Notebooking Pages or Lapbooks

Video 3: How To Create Vocabulary Pages

Video 4: How to Create a Life Cycle Notebooking Page

Video 5: How to Add Lines to Notebooking Pages

Video 6: How to Add Primary-Lines

Video 7: How to Create Cover Pages

If you'd like to make changes to the notebooking pages you can

Download the powerpoint file here