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notebooking pages…good deal?
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We haven’t used these yet due to children’s ages but I am wondering if the lifetime membership deal of $99.95 and 1 free year of Notebook Publisher ($2.49/mo thereafter) is worth it? Any input? Thanks.
Depends on your children and your plan! We have it and it is wonderful. My kiddos notebook beginning in K. In K-3 they do oral narrations and I write it on the notebook page which they then illustrate. My 6th grader has been doing her own notebooking for several years. We use notebooking at various times for history, science, literature, etc. We do not notebook every subject every day, but aim for one notebook page in something every day.
I don’t really use the Notebook Publisher at all. I tried in the early release and there were too many bugs. Maybe I’ll get around to it later, but probably not.
I think it’s a great deal. We have used her pages for two years so far, and I am still discovering amazing pages. We use them similar to Tristan. =)
I bought them & the treasury membership, but personally find notebooking pages more trouble than needed. Too much time is spent searching for the right one. I prefer simple pages that are half lined and even more greatly prefer spiral notebooks.
I DO think the pages are quality, but it just isn’t worth the extra time to me.
So I am considering these, too, and I am wondering about your comments Missceegee…
I am considering these just to get more ‘paper’ work and writing ideas in for my kids. We do so much orally that sometimes I feel like I should provide more options for getting ideas down on paper. And I am also setting my older kids loose a bit so that a good portion of their History work would be independent reading, and I am thinking these may be a good way to ensure they are getting the material mentally (aside from narration).
So I guess I am wondering:
How do you use spiral notebooks in comparison to how you would use a pre-printed notebook page? Do you just have them do narrations on paper or illustrate what they have read?
And, everyone, how does notebooking compare with just doing oral or written narrations?
Is it really helpful…or just busy work?
Notebooking for us isn’t busywork. it gives us a record we can show the state of learning and progress, is a pretty/interesting page to do written narrations on, and for the younger ones, oral narrations written by me.
I think the thing my kids enjoy is twofold: The notebook pages are decorated/more finished looking than a plain paper notebook. There can be room for drawings if you print pages with those spaces (great for my artsy ones, while I print ones with smaller drawing boxes for my non artsy ones).
For us, notebooking is not busy work. However, I find myself going nuts with lapbooking – a lot of that ends up being busy work for me. It is really a matter of teaching/learning styles and personal preference.
For example, having a choice of page – primary lined or regular lined is important to me. And, since I have to keep a portfolio for our records, I like the neatness and same sizeness of the pages. My kids were so sick of plain lined paper that I was having trouble getting them motivated to express themselves and I was tired of the whining about school.
We could spend a lot of time looking for pages, but I tend to look ahead and print a few options or choose the particular page I want them to use on something like Ancient Greece or a particular person. When I am not worried about crunching the time, my girls enjoy picking their own styles for copywork, science, history, composer, artist, and author studies. We like them, but we use a lot of the more basic pages for daily general work and select more “special” papers when being more specific in our studies.
Tristan,
How much does it cost to renew the membership? My understanding is that the membership gives access to everything currently and in the past. Once the year is up, any new pages that are added are not accessible unless you renew. Is that correct? Or am I misunderstanding?
Never mind – I re-read the info and answered it myself. I think it used to be that way, but now it has changed to include all past, present and future. Sorry to bother!
No, they now offer ONLY LIFETIME membership for the pages. All the pages the have now plus all they create in the future (generally every 4-6 weeks they put up new ones) will be yours for as long as they keep creating pages. Years on end. (It used to be a 1 yr membership). The sale price until Jan 1 is $89.95. You can see the details better here: http://notebookingpages.com/dap/a/?a=5853&p=notebookingpages.com/memberships (that has my affiliate link, just so people are aware).
However, the Notebooking Publisher application where you can customize your own pages is not a lifetime membership unless you pay for that right now. In general you get 1 year of this application free with your membership then it is about $2.50 a month for continuing access (which you can cancel). The lifetime deal for the Publisher application goes away permanently Jan 1st.
Servingwithjoy – I do not think the completing of a page is necessarily busywork, dependent upon the child/family. I have one child who enjoys drawing and one who doesn’t. The one who likes drawing could spend too much time on the drawing and the one who doesn’t is annoyed at having to draw. The searching for the perfect page is the time waster for us.
DD11 has 3 composition books, one each for literature, history and geography narrations. She writes her narrations in the books as needed. I like the neatness and compactness of composition books. If she were to want to add a drawing, she could paste it in.
It works for us.
I’m NOT saying the notebooking pages aren’t useful or well designed. I’m simply saying that for our family, they aren’t necessary and take more time than I’m willing to give.
Christie
You may find this post helpful from Barb at Outdoor Hour Challenge/Harmony Fine Arts:
http://harmonyfinearts.org/2012/12/reminder-notebookingpages-coms-lifetime-membership/
Boy, did I pick the wrong word – busywork! Sorry :)!
From what I have seen, the notebooking pages would be a good option and a useful learning activity for us. I have trouble with lapbooking (not being artsy/crafty) so I guess I just wanted the reassurance that the activity is meaningful to the child and not just one more thing to add to our already busy day.
I look forward to adding these to our new year’s curriculum based on what you all have said. Thanks so much!
I’m with Christie on this one – I think notebooking is a great activity, but I also know myself and I would probably forget that I had access to all of these lovely pages, nor would I want to spend time searching for the right theme, etc, so to me it wouldn’t be worth it to pay to have them. I’m more likely to use plain, generic pages (that I can print off a whole pile at once and use for whatever comes up) or even just a spiral notebook so there’s no loose papers at all.
But again that’s just me! I think this is a matter of knowing yourself and what works for your family in terms of determining whether or not this is a good offer. To the OP – if your children haven’t done any notebook pages yet (on account of being young), you may want to wait and play around with freebies/plain pages first to see if notebooking will be a good fit for you, rather than paying for the subscription now. There are too many things I jumped in and spent money on too soon in the beginning, and I wish I had waited and reflected on what works for us a little more before I spent – this is exactly the kind of thing I might have gotten excited about a couple years ago and regretted purchasing later.
Jen
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