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Science notebooking… truly meaningful, or busywork? Looking for something meaningful to do.
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OK, so I will just say straight out that I have not done notebooking. And I am biased against it. I think I was tainted early on after seeing notebooking examples that quite honestly just seemed like a lot of busywork to me. And then, what… the kid is really going to be pulling out old ones and reviewing them? Not my kids.
So I am *trying* to keep an open mind and set aside my cynicism. Not an easy task, mind you. But I find that when we read a science book together, I feel like we need to DO something with it to help process the info. Yes, the kids narrate, but unlike with history or lit, it feels lacking. With nature notebooks there is the recording of observations, but what do you do for other sciences?
For example, today we were reading a story about a boy being sick and reviewing some of the processes at work to fight off bacteria, viruses, etc. It seems like the kind of thing fans of notebooking would be all over, lol, but of course since I am predisposed now to balk at notebooking, I haven’t brought anything like that into play. Ideas?
And the other day my kids were making jokes about body parts — honestly I don’t even remember when they learned about inner ear anatomy, but they were cracking human body jokes with the punchline being things like drum, anvil, etc. Of course you can say they have made their own connections as it should be, but in general I feel like if I had just even some structure in this area it would be better for them.
One dd has an Usborne Science Dictionary that she likes and she reads through it, but doesn’t seem to recall much unless I “make her” record something in science notebook (which is her nature notebook with a handful of non-nature entries like that).
So…ya…looking for non-busywork ideas…even if it is a form of notebooking. 😉
I was just thinking about this today! While at our local curriculum fair, I saw a new product that is just busywork, some sort of chemistry, biology and physics study guides for kids to make so they can use them to study for the periodic reviews and quizzes with this particular curriculum. I was reminded anew how much I can’t stand lapbooks and notebooks for just the reasons you listed above. (Sorry, I know you said you were trying to be open-minded. That is admirable and I’m surely not helping.)
What came to mind for me as a way to cement what my dc are learning, even though I would like to have something tangible, was to play these games and activites I taught during college, way back in my former life. Have you heard of Project WET, Project Wild, Project Learning Tree and the like? I would imagine there are activities such as these all over the web. You’d probably search for “experiential education activities” in the specific subject you’d want to cover. The old, old, old books that I have from when I was certified to teach these have tons of great games and exercises that you can build an entire lesson on. Some involve physical movement (running toward your food if you’re a deer for instance), some involve sketching (sitting on a log and drawing what you see in only one direction), some involve picking up litter and trying to think up alternative ways people may have been able to dispose of it (a take-out coffee cup and lid could have been left in the car, or folded neatly and put in a pocket for disposal later).
It’s certainly not a perfect way to get something in writing, but you can reinforce concepts in a way that perhaps reading or hearing alone won’t do. I think if I were wanting to use this to document our learning, I’d take lots of pictures and then interview the kids about their favorite part, one interesting fact they learned that they hadn’t already known, etc.
HTH,
Jenni
Oh, I might also add that a lot of agencies have these types of lessons available for free on their websites. Here’s a whole page of ideas from the National Wildlife Federation: http://www.nwf.org/Activity-Finder.aspx
I tend to think a lot of notebooking is busy work. But I also think that you could do it in a way that isn’t if you make it more like a form of written narration. I don’t mean that it needs to be an essay every time. There are lots of ways you can narrate and we find pictures and diagrams often work well with science.
Nebby
We do notebooking. Just started this yr w/ Bible mostly and History. Bible is almost everyday and History is once a wk or sometimes we have skipped a wk due to what we are reading is not finished!
It is like a written narrations of what they have learned. And sometimes there is a picture of what they have learned or they have to draw it themselves. My ds10 is proud of his Bible notebook. So much that when grandma was here he had to show her…ALL of it! LOL! That means he read every single page! His has beautiful handwriting and he does some pretty good drawings too! Grandma was impressed..not saying that we need to impress her..but it did help! 🙂
My oldest has a great memory anyway. But, I think it helps out my younger ds8 process the info. Please PM me or ask here if you need more ? answered! HTH! 🙂
I agree with 2flowerboys – you can make it what you will.
We do written narrations of some of our science reading, and they draw diagrams sometimes of the things we are studying as part of their written narrations. We gather all of those narrations into one place. So, I guess that would be notebooking. You can use pretty/fancy papers, or you can just use regular paper.
I think the point is to make it meaningful. So if you wouldn’t normally narrate it – then don’t do a page on it. But if it is something that you would do a written narration on, then you can do a page if you want.
-Tanya
Keep in mind that there is a difference between what is often called “notebooking” and keeping a Charlotte Mason style nature notebook.
I’m not all that crazy about doing them all the time, Pink. I do have a lifetime membership to the Notebookingpages.com site, though, because it saved me money and I can go in and choose pages that my girls will respond to positively. Everybody who has ever read my previous posts can pick up their chins now! 😉
Since we are now required to keep a portfolio in MO, I decided I needed some type of trail for our science and history, hence the notebooking pages. I think those beat “fill in the blanks” or other worksheets I can print out for free since it is requiring the kids to tell me what they know. For the sake of the portfolio, we do one for each artist, composer, Shakespeare and other people (if I remember them). Between that, my blog, and the organizer reports, I think that we are covered pretty well.
Since so much of our science time is oral narrations or physical demonstrations/observations, I do think that I need a way to show progress in our portfolios, so usually for each topic covered, we will have about 2-3 different types of pages covering that topic – it might be a wrtitten narration, a drwan and labeled narration or something else that fits the subject. I also use them for our exams – draw me a picture of _____ and tell me everything you know about/remember it type things. I try to keep it minimal since we have so many subjects we cover – I don’t want to store a huge amount of paper.
I did try lapbooking, but it wasn’t really for us (or maybe me??). (My dd5 still enjoys looking at the few we made for her B4FIAR books, and this week she has practiced her cutting skills on many of the little interactive figures. =) That wasn’t what I intended, but she was still learning so I let her. lol)
Like 2flowerboys said, though, my kids do like showing off their papers sometimes. I find that reassures our supporters! =)
Finding a balance sometimes can be tricky, can’t it?
We recently started notebooking more consistently. While it definitely can be busywork, I think it can help them express their thoughts on their reading…and maybe reinforce what they’ve learned a bit. Our notebook pages have been a bit of written and draw narrations and copywork. We are currently using Apologia and we add one notebooking assignment (possibly 2) per chapter so it isn’t too overwhelming. I try to find pages that leave more room for creativity…or occasionally just start with a blank page. We do sometimes add labels to diagrams which I admit isn’t very creative. They’ve done a few lab reports as well, but we don’t do every single experiment.
We’ve been doing two notebook pages per week, generally one on Bible and one on either science or history. I’m hoping to increase the amount of writing and turn these into their written narrations. I have a reluctant writer and she’s far less intimidated by notebook pages than she would be by a blank sheet of paper!
For Labs – I think this Blog Entry from another mom is helpful… http://ohpeacefulday.blogspot.ca/2012/10/writing-lab-reports.html
Interesting comments — thank you, all!
Doug, thanks for the nature notebook link. That is exactly what my kids do for nature notebooks. But in that same blank spiral they do “non-nature” pages from time to time… really a result of my despising loose paper, combined with the infrequency of those non-nature entries.
Jenni, I totally remember Project Wild!! We had some books for that, I recall. I feel old. lol But those books are long gone. I will look at the site you shared.
I think part of the problem is that I’m not really sure what I am looking for from doing the ambiguous “something” with other science topics outside of the realm of nature. I feel like nature notebooks are set — we have them, know what we’re doing, the only thing I am looking to improve there is better consistency.
My kids do the “draw me / tell me” types of oral, written, and pictorial narrations for history as have been described, so maybe I’m overthinking this (I do that a lot!) and should just apply that to science topics or whatever.
Hmm…. will be thinking about this one! Other opinions/ideas still welcome 🙂
Science topics often lend themselves well to drawings, plays, and practical demonstrations, which help children remember what was learned through reading.
Some ideas:
-Since your children seem to know something about inner ear anatomy, have them draw the ear structure (outer and inner) and tell you what they know about how the ear works. If needed, find a book or two, or look up on the Internet, to fill in any information they may not know.
-Have your children write and perform a play for you and dad on how the immune system works. Let them make costumes and props.
-Provide materials for them to discover first hand how levers, fulcrums, and pulleys work.
-Have your children draw the digestive system on large paper (freezer paper works well for this). Or have them make a game or puzzle based on the digestive system. Maybe each game piece is a piece of food that has to make its way through the system, or they have to put the digestive system together correctly from start to finish.
-Provide buckets and garden hoses and a place in the yard for them to see first hand how water erosion occurs.
-Place potted plants in various positions and locations to see how the plant grows toward the light and how much light affects growth.
Karen those are great ideas!! And if we took pictures and placed those in our portfolios there will not be such a massive amount of papers to sort/store. =)
sheraz, lol, I like your forward thinking about taming that paper tiger.
Karen & suzukimom & others — thank you for all your ideas! Truth be told, this is why when I see something all structured and laid out, like HOD or whatever, I ended up wondering if I should switch over. But then I read other’s ideas and… we could do this! They big thing is that I end up NOT planning for it and time goes by and <sigh>. Ya. But that’s not your problem! Hmm… I do need to work on that.
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