How Notebooking Taught Us to Love to Learn Again

When we made the decision to homeschool my son this year, it was with a heavy heart that I sat down with piles of information on curriculum. None of the "boxed" curriculums seemed to totally meet my son's needs. After 3 years in the public school system, my son had lost his love for learning. We needed to find a way to teach that was more relaxed, covered many subjects and allowed for creativity. Finding the concept of notebooking was an answer to our prayers!

My son is dyslexic and writing is a chore... a very painful, anguish-inducing chore. He has developed a phobia of tests. I've always hated the concept of tests anyway - surely there had to be another way to PROVE that he had learned something. I was looking for a way to make history come alive, show that science is practical and that math makes sense. While I tried to figure that all out, we began reading "Sarah, Plain and Tall".

While searching online for lesson plans involving "Sarah, Plain and Tall", I came across a website about Notebooking. Notebooking is basically creating a scrapbook of information that you learn on a given topic. With book in hand, we gathered paper and pencils, markers and crayons, scissors and glues sticks, stickers and any other art materials that we could find. We talked about the book and made a list of things that we could study pertaining to the book.

Our list included the following things:
q A study of Maine
q A study of Kansas
q A map of Sarah's trip
q Songs (Singing was important to the characters of the story)
q Life on the Prairie
q Family
q Farming
q Letter writing (the characters corresponded via letters)
q Chores

We looked up information on Maine and Kansas and created scrapbook pages with facts for both. Did you know that they share a State Insect in common? The honeybee. We used Mapquest.com to figure out how far the trip is from Maine to Kansas, the figured out how long it would take to get there on a scooter, on foot, on a bicycle, in a car, by horse, and on a plane. We made a list of songs that are important to us and discussed WHY they make us feel good. We brainstormed 50 words to describe what life on the Prairie was like. We wrote an essay about what it means to be a family. We talked to a farmer about how he runs his farm and how much more difficult it would be without machinery. We wrote a letter to Sarah describing what life is like today. We made a list of chores that children did in the Pioneer Days and compared it to a list of what my son is responsible for - then decided that perhaps he should be responsible for a few more chores! We drew pictures and cooked Pioneer meals. We wrote down our recipes. We used triangle pieces of paper to create a paper quilt - discovering patterns and how different shapes fit (or don't fit) together. We discussed Physical vs. Chemical Changes that take place when you light a fire. When we felt that we had adequately covered our list, we completed our notebook and bound it with ribbon. We now have concrete proof of having learned Reading, Writing, Social Studies, Science and Math - all through reading a book.

The most wonderful part of conducting learning in this manner is it was less about what I wanted to "teach" him and more about what he wanted to "learn". I admit, I pushed him to do math and I pushed the envelope a little with the science lesson. However, it was very easy to tie it all in with what he wanted to learn.

The wonderful thing about Notebooking is that it can be incorporated into whatever you want to learn about. Here are some of the ideas we're working on, a planet notebook, a Revolutionary War notebook, a Shapes Notebook (for geometry), an Ohio Notebook and a 13 colonies notebook.

Notebooking isn't only for homeschoolers, if your child is having difficulty learning a subject in school, help them out by breaking the information into bite-sized pieces and putting it into a book - they'll be amazed and encouraged at just how much they really DO know about the subject.