My children are creative and artistic and love to make and decorate things. After we had homeschooled for a while prior to finding CM methods, I met resistance everytime we pulled out a basic lined composition book. They were bored with those lines and hated to use the books. In the meantime I was using Five in a Row and they had little fold and go books to use with their curriculum – aka lapbooking. I loved the idea of using creativity in my girls school work – they thrive with that kind of thing. However, I also didn’t like having file folders stacking up everywhere, so dh and I decided to use the lapbooks on cardstock in a three ring binder. While I was looking for lapbooks, I came across a site called “notebookingpages.com” and a whole new world opened up for me. She uses a combination of TJEd, Classical, and CM to teach her children. I really liked what she had planned out since I was finding myself designing things like that to help catch my dd attention. In the meantime, I started researching the 3 different methods, found SCM and have never looked back. =)
I have a dd with learning challenges (Auditory Processing Disorder) and have found that the notebooking of narrations in as many subjects as I can get her to do is VITAL to her ability to process, organize and present the information that she is trying to take in. Notebooking pages to us at her level (5th grade) really is about her drawn and written narrations. She loves the different formats of the notebooking pages so chooses those to help get prepared to order her thoughts. The ones where she illustrates what she does are amazing in detail, where the written ones are less detailed. It is a very real struggle for her, and will always be a challenge.
So, while I don’t think that Charlotte Mason coined the phrase “Notebooking” – like you said, she did have a nature journal, copywork, written narrations, and other artistic sketch pads. I see no difference in written narrations whether it be on a plain composition page or one with a pretty border in a 3 ring binder. Honestly, does that matter as far as it being a CM thought up thing? Now having said that, there is “notebooking” and then there is “notebooking”. lol
As we use it for my older children (ages 11 and 12), notebooking is pretty much drawn or written narrations on paper with a border or lines or a design. Sometimes it will have a box for a drawing in it. These pages are printed out and kept in their subject folders.
The other “notebooking” is what I use with my younger children, Ruth, very similiar to what you mentioned that you use it for. I have printed out coloring pages of literature books we listen to, insects or nature items we saw on our walks, letter and number activity pages, science related things, and other things that we do with them for school. I hadn’t considered this notebooking since I called the older girls stuff that, so when I answered last night, that is why I had reservations of a six year olds ability to notebook. =)
Of course continue doing the little pages with her. Those are important because if she is like my dc, she refers to it a lot, is proud of it, and “owns” the work that went in to it! It makes them interested and enthusiastic about learning.
As far as my real experience with strong oral narration, well… mine were older and able to read and write when we started narration. But, even then, narration took a good long while to get the hang of, and we are still working on it. At six (my next dd is almost there) we will start with Aesop’s Fables and work with them for oral narrations. My goal is that she can hear the story and tell it back to me in order with a lot of details to be considered a “strong oral narration”. During this time she is also going to be practicing her copywork to be able to frame the letters and words without a lot of thought and stress… then, and only then, am I going to do the “other” notebooking type pages with her.
Charlotte Mason may not have said to write a young child’s narration down. However, when my little ones see the older ones writing and telling me what they have learned, she wants to be like them. It really can help them create the habit. And as Sonya has repeatedly said, starting a written narration and letting them finish it as you help a child make the transition from oral to written can ease the child over the hump and into independence. In my experience, doing that will help my children be independent faster in the long run.
To be more specific, I haven’t ever looked ahead at the lessons and said oh, I must plan one everyday. For me, it really does depend on time, how I feel, what the subject is, etc. I just try to always have a bunch of pages printed for use as we go – then I can assign it as we are doing things.
Really, we do pages for all artists, scientists, inventors, writers, and important influential people we study. We also use them for mid-term exam pages, science experiements, cool moments in history, occasional literature chapters, daily narrations of independent work, etc.
