How to Get Started With Notebooking Pages For Busy Working Moms
Sharing how I use Notebooking pages to suit my kids, how to get started for free and creative ways you can use Notebooking Pages in your homeschool. Find. Print. Go!
Notebooking is a really great way to document your child’s learning in a personal creative way. But here is the kicker for me…
My kids love worksheets.
We use them mostly for science, history, reading lists, character study, and timelines, just to name a few.
What do they hate? Notebooking and Lapbooking.
My fault, but still.
The truth of the matter is you can make your kids hate things by sucking the fun right out OR turning every single little thing into “school”.
Disclosure: I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Do you know where my favorite place to get worksheets is? NotebookingPages.com.
I love NotebookingPages as worksheets because it is so easy for me. Find, print, and go!
Like anything, I think it is super important to use tools in a way that makes your life easier.
What Is Notebooking?
“Notebooking = Creating and compiling a personalized notebook of learning experiences, new knowledge, insights, sketches, illustrations, creative writing, reflections, and more! This is not a diary, but more like a scrapbook of things learned.” –Notebooking Pages Quick Start Guide
Notebooking is a great way to keep a record of what your children are learning in their homeschool in a creative way. My artsy kid loves notebooking.
But here is the thing, I don’t use notebooking the way it is designed to be used. As a busy working mom who is also homeschooling, notebooking in the traditional sense doesn’t fit our homeschool.
And that’s okay!
Before I share how we use Notebooking in our homeschool, let me share how to get started for free so you can follow along if you like.
How To Get Started With Notebooking Pages For Free
Oh, and I also like that you can get started for free. It’s a great way to find out if Notebooking Pages will work for your kids.
Step 1: Visit Notebooking Pages and sign up
Sign up now to receive over 3000 FREE notebooking pages and a Notebooking QuickStart Guide from NotebookingPages.com.
Step 2: When you sign up you get over 600 free notebooking pages, that include everything! Basic Lined Set, Bible, A-Z, Famous Artists, Famous Composers, World Explorers, Copywork (Animal Themes), Ancient History, Nature Study (plants & animals),
… and 3 complete country sets: USA, Canada, & Australia!
Bonus: You also get free training emails that will be sent out to show you how to use NotebookingPages.com. Be sure to keep an eye open for those emails.
You can stop here, and skip down to the next section. But if you were wondering how to purchase different pages, keep reading.
Step 3: If the pages you want are not in the free resource pack you can go to the “shop” page (here)
I like done-for-you pages and the search feature is great. Click on the banner to see if it fits your family.
Step 3: Check your email and be sure to check your spam folders, especially if you are using Gmail. Download and print off as many and as often as you like.
Easy right?
For the record, I think the Lifetime Membership is worth the price. I have it and love it.
My Favorite Organization Tip For Digital Products!
The problem with something like this is losing it on my computer.
To keep that from happening, I want to share with you a tip I’ve picked up since getting my hands on the Genesis Toolkit Bloggers Bundle last year. That is a bundle filled with blogging and business resources.
If you use digital resources for anything you are going to want to use this tip.
After you buy, create folders sorted by the “topic”.
For example, for Notebooking Pages, you might make a folder on your desktop called “History”.
Next, inside that folder create a folder for each topic such as maps, timelines, character pages, book lists, etc.
Within Notebooking pages there are different styles of the same thing.
Let me explain. My kids love the timeline sheets for our history study. You can see the different ones here: History Notebooking Pages.
Below I’m sharing 4 of the different styles of timeline pages your kids can pick from.
One child likes a certain style of sheet and another likes something different. The great thing is how easy it for them to choose.
I scroll through and they pick out what notebooking page they want to use today. I print, and we go!
But when it comes time to print another sheet, sometimes I forget what they picked. By making a folder either for each child or each style, they picked. I don’t need to take time to find the right style.
Open the file, grab the notebooking page, and print. So much easier!
I love this tip because it saves me time and makes it easy to remember to use them.
Buying anything, no matter how great it is and NOT using it, it’s a waste of money. Losing the resources on your computer and not being able to find them is annoying. Just me?
This folder trick I use all the time!
How To Make Notebooking Pages Work For You
Now that you have your Notebooking Pages and they are all organized, how are you going to use them?
The possibilities are endless…Notebooking has so much freedom to suit the needs of each child and the way they learn.
We’ve used them for our Canadian History studies and you can read about that here.
Or design your own unit study, as I did here for our bird study. I would never have the courage to do that without access to Notebooking pages.
I pulled together our books, printed off the sheets, and picked out our hands-on activities.
Notebooking With Productive Homeschooling
Of course, you can use them for Notebooking, after all that is what they were created for. Lol!
Notebooking is a great way to pull what your child is learning together without stressing over creating projects, finding materials, and figuring out how to organize them.
Notebooks are very similar to creating a learning journal. I like to use a 3 ring binder for our subjects and this will work for notebooking as well.
The two components you are aiming for is written and visual.
Written can include:
- Reports
- Timelines
- Copywork
- Lists
- Research
- Narration
- Stories
- Just to name a few
You can easily print off templates for these from Notebooking Pages or let your child design their own.
Visual can include:
- Maps
- Postcards
- Drawings
- Art projects
- Photographs taken
- Collages
- Stickers
- Graphs
- Just to name a few
My favorite part of Notebooking is how creative you can get. My daughter actually has a personal notebooking styled journal I just didn’t call it that. I didn’t want her to associate it with “cut and paste”. 😉
You can read about how I made my kids HATE cut and paste here. Just remember it’s what you aren’t supposed to do!
She has used hers to create a memory book. She keeps mementos she has collected from our museum trips and camping trips such as maps, photos, drawings, coins, and more.
As you can see Notebooking Pages can be very useful and fun!
Inside Peek At Both Productive Homeschooling Options:
As I mentioned above there are options:
Because I like to have as much information as possible before deciding what fits my family, I wanted to share with you a video to provide more information.
Check out the ProSchool Publisher
Homeschooling Freedom!
Remember the key to homeschooling and working is to make it work FOR you.
So go ahead, break the rules and use Notebooking pages in the way that suits your child and your family 😉
Did you remember to grab your free pages to get started? Click here!
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Hi, I’m Jen. I help working moms juggle their career and homeschool their kids by providing support, systems and tools. You are warmly invited to Join the Online Community Here!
