There's a LOT of great stuff available for St. Patrick's Day!! I didn't add everything I found but I added a few Pinterest boards at the bottom with a bunch of fun stuff as well.
I'm getting this out SO MUCH later than planned (I sorta had my daughter's wedding to plan and stuff;) But you can always save these to your computer for next year -- that way you don't loose track of all this greatness. Because I'm so absent minded, I send myself alerts on my phone to remind myself of the file on my computer I saved for something later... is that completely insane? I hope not! I just can't keep track of it all!! Haha!
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 MYABC'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.
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.
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.
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!
I'm working on some graphic organizers for my son. I made these so you can fold them in half and add a cover to add to a lapbook or notebook. However, you can also just add them to a notebook, as is. I just like to have extra options :)
Description:
Spiders are fascinating creatures! Learn about what makes them so interesting, as well as helpful to us, and so much more!
The majority of the mini-books include the answers (when relevant) at the end of each activity. The answers are set up in a way where they can be cut and glued to the mini-book for your younger learners. This set creates a double lapbook with one flap.
Included in this set:
Vocabulary
Life Cycle
Parts of a Spider
Spider Classification
Spiders are Arachnids
Spiders Arachnids Cousins
How Do Spiders Use Their Silk?
Types of Spider Webs
Catching Prey
What do Spiders Eat?
How Spiders Eat Their Prey
What are Some Natural Threats to Spiders?
Spiders Harmful to Humans
Benefits to Humans
Spider Facts
Spider Study
Suggested Lapbook Layout
This tite is also included in the following sets:
All Science and Nature Bundle - On Sale for $15.00 - You can only receive the sale price by clicking the link provided.
Description:
All our current Science and Nature titles in one complete set! 100's of notebooking pages, mini-books sets, and flash cards to assist in making learning more fun!
21 titles currently available in this set:
Dinosaur Notebooking Pages
Nature Study of North American Birds Notebooking Pages
Nature Study of Mammals Notebooking Pages
Nature Study of North American Desert Wildlife Notebooking Pages
African Grassland Animals Notebooking Pages
African Grassland Animals Mini-books and Flashcards
North American Grassland Animals Notebooking Pages
North American Grassland Animals Mini-books and Flashcards
One of the most used tools in our homeschool would have to be my ProClick Binding Machine. It has been invaluable to me over the years! I've bound nearly every notebook we've ever created with this. We have also used binders quite a bit, so I can't say that we've used it with all our notebooks. Many times, instead of placing our lapbooking elements into a folder, I will bind a book and place them in that instead. I usually only do this if our study became very extensive and it would require so many folders it becomes too much.
So, I thought I'd add my pros and cons about my experience with my Proclick.
Pros
The spines can open and close so you can continue to add to your project. It comes with a handy little tool to help you reopen the spines.
The spines come in a variety of sizes... up to 110 pages!
The spines can be easily cut down so you can use them for smaller projects or smaller paper
Pages lay flat, which allows you to put your book together and continue to work on it.
The ProClick is small and easy to store
Very easy to use, even a child could use it
Cons
I can only punch about 6-7 pages at at time and only 2 pieces of card stock
I can't bind large papers, such as 12x12 scrapbook sheets.
Honestly, neither of the cons have ever been an issue for me. But, I thought I'd add them in case it might be an issue for you.
I'm completely thrilled with my Proclick and I highly recommend this for both the notebooking and lapbooking homeschooler!
This lapbook was created to go along with an American Revolutionary War unit study put together by my daughter, Ali. This unit study was a learning service project for one of her history classes (she's a senior and history major at Souther Utah University). Please leave her a comment if you are so inclined. She would love to read your feed-back, whether it is good or bad. We both hope you enjoy this study!
