Scheduling Notebooking

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  • ima2
    Member

    I am planning out our schedule for next year for my dd5. I would like to introduce a little notebooking for science and history, but am unsure how to schedule in our day and week. Do those of you who use notebooks schedule in time weekly or daily to do them? We will be doing all of our read alouds first on the couch before moving to the table for copywork, math, etc. Is if o.k. to wait until we are done with all of our read alouds and are working at the table to do our notebook pages? It seems disruptive to keep moving back and forth from the couch to the table, but it also seems disjointed to do our science and history reading and then an hour later do our notebooking. Also, how often do you aim to have your child notebook for a subject?  Thank you in advance!

    4myboys
    Participant

    Personally I wouldn’t notebook more than a couple times a week, and only with one subject a day, especially with a 5 year old.  What are you planning to use for Science?  If you are sticking with Nature Study — a great idea for this age, then working on a nature journal once a week is plenty.  I also wouldn’t personally schedule much for history at this age, either, so once a week would be plenty for notebooking.  I would leave the history reading for last that day and have her notebook first when you move to the table.  I would only ask her to picture to illustrate something from the days reading and then you could write a sentence or two about the picture on the bottom of the page.  You could also have her draw her picture while you read the lesson.  That works for some kids, but for others it’s too distracting.

    I only have my boys notebook a couple days a week.  Right now they are only notebooking for Science, but next year they will start History as well. They are in 2nd & 5th and this was our first year homeschooling.  They draw a picture in the frame on the notebooking page, then dictate to me their narration.  Sometimes I have the older use the dictated narration for copywork. He struggles with writing (dysgraphia) so we are not quite doing written narrations yet.  Hopefully next year we’ll gradually work our way up to a few written narrations a week.

    sheraz
    Participant

    It also depends on the lesson, my mood and the time we have.  😉  I generally save that subject for the last that day so everyone can take their time.

    We do alot more than 2, mostly because my daughter with Auditory Processing Disorder can draw a really detailed picture of something we read, but has a terrrible time getting much out verbally.  I learned in a class last week that they have terrible short term memory (which I already knew), but by letting her draw it, I realized that I was giving her a chance to decode, sort, process and organize the information in a way that helps her retain what she is hearing. She then explains to me the drawing and I write it, then she re-writes it in her book.  This also helps her information input-output and helps with spelling, grammar, and handwriting. 

    So we actually do a lot of notebooking for that reason, plus we enjoy reviewing what they learned/drew.  It’s fun to see the real progress.

    ima2
    Member

    Thank you so much for sharing your experiences 4myboys and sheraz! After reading your posts and marinating on it some more, I think we will just notebook once a week or so for science and wait on history until she is older.  I also realised that my original expectations were too high. She really doesn’t need to memorize lots of facts right now. Instead I just  want her to enjoy some new ideas and good books! Similarly, I don’t want notebooking to be an overwheling chore, but a fun activity, so keeping it to one subject once a week seems like a better plan. Just having her draw a picture and then dictating to me a few sentences also seems like it would be very age appropriate. Thank you so much for helping me sort this out!

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