For the record, I am a notebooking, journaling, scrapbooking person.  I love notebooks.  I have a notebook of all my computer work.  I have a notebook for all my medical transcription knowledge gleaned through the years. I have my new (much loved, I might add) Charlotte Mason notebook. I have my home notebook. I have a notebook of mosaic birdbath ideas. You get the picture.

Obviously, for school, I love the idea of keeping a notebook.

“Well doesn’t everyone use a notebook for school,” you might ask? 

Maybe not in the way that notebookers use notebooks. 

A lot of people use notebooks to hold their loose leaf paper, taking out sheets to work on. They use it for storage of things they will consume. Many students have composition books – one for each subject – that can end up worn and tattered by the end of the year. 

The way notebookers use notebooks is to create a beautiful specimen of work done through the school year.  A notebook is to hold the finished work.  It’s almost like journaling or scrapbooking.  There are even websites that offer notebooking pages for students to fill with copywork or creative writing, among other things.  There are tons of things that can go into notebooks. 

You can have one big notebook, or many notebooks. You can have a nature notebook, bible notebook, science notebook, history notebook, unit study notebook, and the list goes on.

That said, there are many ways to “journal” or “scrapbook” or “notebook” a year’s worth of work.  This past year, for the first time, I used a spiral bound notebook and put the best of the best into it, scrapbook style. 

While I love the way it turned out overall, in that it’s full, and full of memories, I’m not totally crazy over the fact that it won’t lay flat. Ours ended up bulky, but then again I did use one notebook for everything (except for math which is in its own little 3-prong folder – but I did include her end-of-year math test in the notebook for completeness).

Michaela’s 5th Grade Notebook

The first page, of course, has pictures of the girl, her age and her grade.

Throughout the year, I glued in her best work each week, along with pictures to go along.

There are pages from fieldtrips.  I love that you can glue in envelopes and make little pockets to store things in, like the Cleopatra bookmark from the museum.

We even glued in funny artwork that she did to show her spontaneously creative side.

But it’s not just Sponge Bob!  Large worksheets can be folded in half and glued in so that you can open them up for viewing. 

We taped in postcards so that they can be flipped out to read the backs.

Illustrations from a story for her blog.  In fact much of her art work is in here, put in with adhesive “corners,” so no glue was used on them.

When we studied Grass Sandals, she made a matching game, but you know we’ll likely not play this again, so I tossed half the cards and put one half in here.

Copywork samples.

Nature study pages.

Pictures from our new bunny adventures.

We glued in many fieldtrip pictures and souvenirs.  Again, I love how you can glue in storage envelopes for postcards and such.

We even glued in our letters from our Wild West Cousins we gained while doing our Prairie Tuesdays!

As you can see, this notebook ended up being a portfolio of her work, representative of every subject, covering the whole year, but also a scrapbook, full of memories and pictures and fun!

What I like about the spiral notebook:

• cover is attractive
• it’s more like a scrapbook. You can write little notes directly into it and glue things in as well
• the finished product is pretty (even if mine won’t lay flat)
• they are inexpensive and vary in size, so you can choose what kind you want for what subject.

What I do NOT like about the spiral notebook:

• the finished product may not lay flat if you put in anything other than regular paper
• pages can rip out and there’s no way to reinforce them and put them back in
• because it did require the kind of attention you’d give a scrapbook, it turned into more of something I kept up with versus something Michaela was responsible for. She did the work – I kept the scrapbook.
• requires glue or some type of adhesive

What I like about having ONE notebook for everything

• Work of all subjects can be placed in chronological order, so looking through it is literally like a trip down memory lane
• It forces a weeding out of mediocre stuff so you end up with a really striking portfolio

What I do NOT like about having just one notebook

• Obviously, you have to flip through to find specific things; things are not separated into any order
• You don’t end up with one powerful resource in any one subject area, say history or nature, for example. Imagine building on one nature notebook for 12 years!

One thing that I am really proud of is that this notebook was basically done at the end of the year.  Other than waiting on a couple of end-of-year pictures, I kept up with this week by week, making school record-keeping a whole lot easier!  You may remember my post on my organization station.  I suggest having a system in place for weekly checks and touch-ups, having supplies organized where teacher and student (age appropriate) can get to them.

This coming year, we’ll be doing Ambleside Online with Beyond Five In A Row for her biograpy reading, as well as a co-op of some Volume 4 titles, so a lot of reading and then narration in written and oral form and many projects and “handicrafts.”  We’ll be doing foreign language, nature study, art and music appreciation, and if it goes as I hope it will, we’ll stick with Ambleside for the duration.  In that case, I don’t know that I want only one notebook for each year. 

At graduation, I know there are areas where I would like for Michaela to have resources that she’ll enjoy for her whole life. An art appreciation notebook would be nice.  A nature notebook would be awesome.  A history notebook would also be awesome. 

Here are some notebooking resources that I think are nice:

Math Notebooking - who knew math could make such beautiful notebooks?

Jimmie, the author of the above math notebooking, also has a notebooking exhibit page.

Cindy Rushton, who is known as the Binder Queen, has a nice article - Let’s Try Notebooking, on trying notebooking and letting the children do the work.

My friend Sheri at The Shades of Pink has a section on her blog about her notebooking.  Her “crew” has produced some beautiful notebooks.

Another friend, Heather (Blog, She Wrote) has wonderful ideas for notebooking.

Friend Kayla shows how she has one 3-ring notebook for FIAR broken into sections by books rowed.

More to come as I plan how we’ll store our work this next year!

Lynn

Just for you, more pictures of the garden from Saturday.  It was a lovely weekend here, even if a bit chilly.  Tonight it’s supposed to be even colder. 

That’s okay.  It’s February.  (And you thought I didn’t know what month it was.)

Last night I did a bit of planning in the school planners.  We’ve got 17 weeks left in our school year.  We’ll be doing our annual testing in about 12 weeks.  A couple of those weeks will be a spring break for us. 

What does all of this mean?   This school year will be over before I know it!

Next year Princess of the Universe will start Beyond Five In A Row, which I am very excited about.  In this house, I don’t think we ever fully get away from Five In A Row, but formally she’ll be doing Beyond.  We have several more Five In A Row Volume 4 titles I want to “row” before this school year is over.  The one up next?

Angelo. 

It fits in perfectly right now, actually.  After reading about Ovid and looking at mythology, what better place to go than Rome?  We’ll have to pull out Papa Piccolo for review, of course, and try our hand at drawing cats and birds.  There is more reading I want to do from mythology and we’ll be reading more from Famous Men of Rome. 

As far as gardening this year, I really want to ExPaNd and have FuN with it.  (Like I don’t say THAT every year.)  In the past we’ve enjoyed garden plans for children by Sharon Lovejoy, whose writing I adore, by the way. 

Awwwww.  They’re sisters, after all.

The hellebores are pretty.  You have to get down on the ground and really appreciate them.  I know I do!  You would do that with me if you were here, right? 

More daffodils.

Lest you think I have forgotten about school work for my sweet boy Joseph, I have goals for him too:  Spell whatever word you like.  I know you can do it.

We are working on spelling, spelling, spelling.

Make the most of this day.

Lynn

Let me share a beautiful old Valentine’s Day postcard that I have in my collection of old postcards.

Little gold hearts, big red and pink hearts, Cupid’s arrows, and forget-me-nots.  What speaks more of love? 

Did everyone read something about Cupid this week?  We’ll be talking about Cupid tonight and reading more about Cupid in mythology.  We studied Cupid recently as he was right-smack-dab in the middle of the story of Apollo and Daphne.  In fact, I totally blame Cupid for Daphne getting turned into a laurel tree.  If I didn’t love gardening so much, I’d probably be mad.

Need more Valentine’s Day red? 

This is the view from my window yesterday as I sat at my desk and typed.  I love the bright red cardinals that hang out in our garden.   A few years back I even wrote an article about them for The Healthy Homeschool website. 

I know it’s not super clear because I’m cropping this out of a picture taken from quite a distance, but you can see that the real-life cardinal is enjoying the mosaic birdbath I made along with two ceramic birds incorporated into the design.

Hey, guess what?  Today is not only Valentine’s Day, but for us it is Big Furry Man’s birthday.  Yes it is!  He is 46 today.  Uh, he always picks on me for one month out of the year that he loves being married to a “younger woman” and now here we are at that month.

Okay, so I’ll be 46 next month and then we’ll be the same age again.  I guess I should just enjoy that one month that I get to be a “younger woman.”

As far as school this past week, I feel like we accomplished a few major things, in spite of my running around so much.  We finished Act I of Hamlet and are really enjoying it.  Joseph has said now that he’s very glad he’s reading it and that he was mistaken in saying he didn’t want to.  Michaela will still say that it’s boring and yet everytime I pull our copies of Hamlet off the bookshelf she yells, “I get to be Hamlet” or “I get to be the king.”  She wants the big parts. 

I am also pushing Joseph really hard in the spelling department.  I can tell the lightbulb has come on for spelling, just like it did for reading the year that he finally took off with reading.  We will have end-of-year testing in May and I want him to have really jumped up there in spelling. 

Michaela and I reviewed places she should know from her Five In A Row studies.  We pulled out our pretty little storage box of story disks and she began to place them on the world map:  Sri Lanka, Atlantic Ocean, Vermont, Australia, Arctic Ocean, Ungava Bay…

All I’ve got to say is who needs a chiropractor when you’ve got a child who can wrench your head around like this to look at the camera?  I’ve been aligned.  Also, I’m obviously on my lunch break in this picture, because I’ve got my typing gloves on.

Well, it’s off to the work desk this morning.  Enjoy your Saturday!

Lynn

Ahhhh, Monday.  Another work day. 

But lesson plans are mostly written out and Princess of the Universe seems to be getting over her cold. 

There are a few things I wanted to write about this morning. 

First of all, Steve Lambert, publisher of Five In A Row curriculum.

Many in the homeschooling community already know about this as The Old Schoolhouse magazine sent out a note to subscribers a couple of days ago.  I wanted to mention it here too.  Steve Lambert just underwent surgery to release pressure from his skull after taking a fall not too long ago.  The good news is that the surgery appears to have been successful and Mr. Lambert is on the road to a full recovery.  I just feel that this would be a good time, if you haven’t already, to purchase something from Five In A Row.  There’s no way I can say in one blog post how much Five In A Row has enriched our homeschool experience.  Five In A Row offers a variety of products, including beautiful Five In A Row manuals as well as digital downloads.  How timely that they have a Black History Month Fold-N-Learn and a Valentine’s Day Fold-N-Learn that you can download!  Why don’t you look around their site and see what you can find to buy?  I will be making some purchases this month.  No, the Lamberts didn’t ask for this, I just know the integrity that the Lamberts have and how they — for years — have provided mesage boards to the Five In A Row family, keeping them ad-free and really, as the forum says, like a “family room.”   They are self-employed as publishers, and I cannot imagine that it would hurt one bit to purchase something from them right now.  I know first-hand that hospitalizations and surgeries aren’t cheap.  I also know first-hand how great their curriculum is! 

A photograph from last April. I hope you don’t mind.

Second, in light of February being Black History Month, our copywork this week will include some poetry by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.  “Incident” by Countee Cullen breaks my heart. 

Last of all, we are moving on from Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho and there’s excitement in the doll house!

I think for our rowing this week we’ll revisit a wonderful book, Follow the Drinking Gourd.  Actually, I think PBS airs that book on Reading Rainbow today.

Lynn

We read the sweetest book today. 

It’s called Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey.  This  book would be a fantastic go-along with The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. It has a bit of trivia about New York City in the 1930s. There’s even a picture of the George Washington Bridge with the Little Red Lighthouse underneath!  The book addresses what happens when once useful things go out of date.  In that regard, it would also be great with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel.

The book moves into modern time, the restoration of the Fireboat and its heroic work during the events of September 11th, 2001.

“The Harvey was a hero.  And everyone knew it.”

This book made me cry.  Of course.  Princess of the Universe was not surprised about that, and I’m sure you are not either.   I felt like the book introduced the events of September 11th to a young reader without making it overwhelming.  It does open up the topic, however.

Lynn

I absolutely LOVE seeing the creative side of my daughter come out when we really get into playing dolls in her room.  She has her art desk close by, so it’s no trouble to stop and invent whatever you need in the midst of playing.

Take, for instance…

this fine shower.  In the middle of redoing some rooms, Princess of the Universe decided that the dolls absolutely positively had to have a shower installed in their bathroom.

Okay.  Yes.   But OF COURSE!

She used a little clear plastic box (left over from who knows what), some light wood material left over from the recent airplane building, and a little condiment container for the shower head.  She even used one of her foam stickers as a no-slip pad in the tub, which has been trimmed in the most beautiful of polka dot tiles.

And that was not all.  Princess of the Universe loves to go to the HGTV website and watch the decorators transform rooms from dull to DrAmAtIc!!!  She especially likes David Bromstad.  She got the idea for doing a custom piece of art work on a box.  If you know David, then you’ll know about the boxes.  Anyhoo…

This art on a box top really pops in the fancy-schmancy dolls dressing room! 

Yes, I love to see her creative side, but I also love just being with her.  Playing side by side, laughing, putting little things into place in the doll house, with our faces practically side by side.  I guess I’m just in love with my children.

Another recent creation by Princess of the Universe is this sweet little crib/playpen for the babies.  Let me tell you, it has come in VERY handy in keeping the dolls safe from wild horses, fires, storms, and even a bear attack! 

Oh yes.

WHO would have every expected that a well known bear from preschool days would wander out of his bookshelf and over to the doll house to attack??!!

Not I.

On a school note, I am absolutely LOVING Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho by Dawnine Spivak.  I think this is my all-time favorite FIAR book.  Well, I’ve said that before haven’t I?

No, really.  There’s something so totally endearing about this book, not to mention how educational it is.  And can anyone say beautifully illustrated?  It is illustrated by Demi.

Princess of the Universe works on one of the lessons from Five In A Row.

Shakespeare anyone?  We are still reading Hamlet and enjoying all these words you never hear anymore.  I was Bernardo today.  Joseph was Horatio.  Princess of the Universe was Marcellus.  (I think I have all those spelled right.)

Well, another day has come to a close.  Now it’s time for bedtime stories and sleep.  There’ll be more fun — hopefully — tomorrow.

Lynn

“Little Mrs. Peter Rabbit, who used to be Little Miss Fuzzytail, sat at the edge of the dear Old Briar-patch, anxiously looking over toward the Green Forest.  She was worried.”

“There was no doubt about it.  Little Mrs. Peter was very much worried.  Why didn’t Peter come home?  She did wish that he would be content to stay close by the dear old Briar-patch.  For her part, she couldn’t see why under the sun he wanted to go way over to the Green Forest.  He was always having dreadful adventures and narrow escapes over there, and yet, in spite of all she could say, he would persist in going there.”

From The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton W. Burgess.

Thus we traveled last night on another new bedtime reading adventure.  We opted for something light.  Something fun.  Something about animals. 

And while we are talking about animals, please excuse the disheveled look of old Bunny in the picture above.  He has been loved by four near-grown children and has had many bold adventures himself.

If you just cannot get enough of animals with big personalities, who talk and interact with each other in their forest and prairie homes, you’ll probably enjoy this sweet little book.

There’s even a Thornton W. Burgess Society, I was pleased to discover.   You will find some very pretty coloring pages at their website, information about the society, and more.

Unit-study-wise, we are following after, in a most relaxed fashion, the sword and the snowflake.  What is that? you might ask.

Well, Joseph and I are beginning a study of Shakespeare and Hamlet.  Though it’s been in my mind for forever, it seems, we still have not read anything by Shakespeare.  It’s time.  The child graduates in 2009.

Princess of the Universe and I are currently rowing Snowflake Bentley (Caldecott Medal Book), using Five in a Row for lesson plans, of course. 

I am just anxious to see how the two intersect, because I know they will.  

Last of all, you might want to visit the HomeMade DollHouse to see what the dolls are up to.  Picture a little general store in Vermont where the snow is piled up underneath the windows and they sell candy canes and sleds.  (I love how the doll house gets tied into school.)

Wishing you a wonderful day!

Lynn

We’ve had a lovely day.  I can say that, even though I’m exhausted and my brain hurts.  Time for bed, no doubt. 

I won’t bore you with more marked-off lesson plans today, though it was fun to share that for a couple of days.  It helped me find some of our weak spots, and I hope it helped you as well. 

Homeschooling is all about learning to live real life, so real life happening shouldn’t scare anyone out of homeschooling.

As noted, we are dutifully finishing up The Raft this week.  What an amazing book. 

You all know me and my love of the doll house.  We’ve been making some sort of doll house souvenir from each book we’ve rowed.  It just so happens that the Five In A Row lessons for The Raft included a perfect doll house accessory without me having to come up with anything on my own.

Yes, it’s a raft.  Princess of the Universe will likely, at some point, get around to adding information about this to her blog.  I’ll be adding this to our doll house blog later.  You may want to pop over to Home Made Doll House anyway and see our new doll.  She’s most intriguing to the dolls already living in the doll house. 

My walk today was nice.  The day ended up being a bit warmer than I had anticipated, so my black shawl was all I needed.  No coat required.

I love the old trees in our neighborhood.  They certainly have personality.  The trees look different without their leaves.

Pretty.

I love this tangle of wild roses with only some small rosehips left hanging on.

Goodnight.

Lynn

I just love Sundays, for many reasons.  It’s such a family day for us.

Princess of the Universe wakes up and goes straight to Papa Bear for a Sunday morning hug.

Sunday afternoons are a special time for me because the house is quiet and I plan out my lesson plans for the next week.  I always jot down things as they come to me through the prior week, but Sunday is the day that I round things out and write out all my plans for the upcoming week.  The first thing I do is head to my tea cupboard.

Because who can do lesson planning without a cup of hot tea close by?

Today I opt for Tazo Wild Sweet Orange.  It’s very tangy, but made better with a spoonful of locally produced honey.

Now it’s time to go through books and papers and ideas and get everything written into the two planners that I use — one for my daughter and one for my son. 

I write down ideas as they come to me — even little things, because I know I’ll forget them in the busy-ness of the upcoming week, with work, fieldtrips, meals, etc.  Jotting something down helps me remember, oh yeah, I wanted to do it that way.

When all the lessons are written out, the books and papers we’ll use go into two shelves — again, one for Princess of the Universe and one for Big Joe.  This makes it super easy to grab what I need through the week.

I will share with you what’s on tap for the upcoming week.

Joseph
Monday:
Call out spelling words for sister’s test
Go over grammar lesson with sister, p. 26
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Language Arts worksheet
Math concepts test and then we’ll go from there for the rest of the week.
Tuesday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Math
Read about Wisconsin over tea
Spelling 34
Wednesday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Math
Spelling 35
Thursday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Math
Spelling 36
Friday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Spelling 37
Math
Karate lesson
Notes: Joseph is working on writing a book as a creative writing project. That is what “work on book” means.  He has a science worksheet that must be completed by the end of the week.  Also, you’ll notice a variety of math resources on his shelf.  He has dyslexia and we are doing his math by covering concepts and then pulling from various resources to make sure he gets it.

Princess of the Universe
Monday:
Spelling test/grammar lesson – see Joseph
Read aloud – Caddie Woodlawn
Read newspaper article about reaching out
FIAR social studies The Raft
Saxon 19
Tuesday: Spelling
Read about Wisconsin over tea
Read aloud – Caddie Woodlawn
Saxon 20
FIAR Language Arts The Raft – we’ll be using words to do a creative writing project
Wednesday: Spelling
Read aloud – Caddie Woodlawn
FIAR – Art The Raft
Saxon 21
Thursday: Field Trip – Community Service
Saxon 22
FIAR – Science The Raft
Friday:
Spelling Test
Read Aloud Caddie Woodlawn
Read about classification together from What Your 5th Grader Needs to Know
FIAR Science The Raft
Karate lesson
Notes: Miss Priss has all week to read Little Oh and write a one-page book report. She also has a stack of cursive worksheets to pull from as well as a multitude of other colorful worksheets when she just wants something to do. And don’t even mention all the books she has to choose from!

I will add in other things for both children as occasions present themselves. You know part of my favorite quote is to “await occasions.”

You may notice that we’ve been on The Raft for awhile now.  It might help to know that this study has been interrupted by the Thanksgiving holiday (we took all week off) as well as lifestyle changes here after the heart attack that are taking time and thought to implement, but we will certainly wrap up this wonderful book this coming week and then move on to another exciting Five In A Row title for the following week.

I’ll let you know how things are going as we work our way through the week.

Happy Sunday,

Lynn

Brrrrrrrrrrrr! It’s really cold outside this morning and it was cold last night. But I had a wonderful evening last evening, cozy and snug in my old house, writing out lesson plans and planning out the upcoming week. I’m very thankful that things seem to be getting back to normal around here. We got a VERY good report from the cardiologist on Friday, so things are looking up!

Happy Monday!  I hope your week has started out on the right foot.

When I wake up on Mondays, it’s hard sometimes to make myself go to my work desk and work all day.  I could easily get started doing little projects in the house and be content to mess around with house-related things all day long. 

To satisfy the domestic side of me (which is my largest side, by the way), I do just a little something in the house before the work day starts.  This morning I dusted and straightened a little area where I keep a lot of family photographs.  Do you see the beautiful new tablecloth from my Five In A Row friend? 

I lined the backs of the shelves with some retro-looking wrapping paper.  I love the retro colors.  Princess of the Universe loves anything Christmas-y, so she’ll love this.

We are continuing on with our reading of Caddie Woodlawn.  We snuggled up last night and read a chapter.

Caddie Woodlawn. With the Wisconsin big woods theme, goes along great with a FIAR study of The Raft.

We will also continue along this week with our study of The Raft, using lesson plans from Five In A Row.  I have written out lesson plans for today using items that Princess of the Universe can do on her own. 

I printed out some Caddie Woodlawn paperdolls from the Wisconsin History site for Miss Priss to have fun with this week. 

I have a lot of nature activities planned for this week.  More later.  Off I go to type. 

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Lynn