A few years ago, I signed up for the free resources at NotebookingPages.com. I was immediately impressed with the 100's of great FREE pages that were now at my fingertips. Still...I will have to say that I have wistfully gazed at the Lifetime Membership Program tab and wondered. "What lies behind that magic button?"
Well. The mystery is over. I have been able to review the Lifetime Membership from NotebookingPages.com. Was it worth the wait? You betcha!
If you aren't familiar with the term "notebooking," let me fill you in. Notebooking is basically journaling. Your student records what he or she is learning inside these pages. Pictures, maps and visuals can be added to enhance the notebook. You can notebook with any subject, even math.
If notebooking had been in play when I was a kiddo in public school, I would have had a whole different kind of experience in many respects. And even though Josiah is dysgraphic (and would rather do about anything than write) I have found notebooking to be a useful tool in our homeschool.
NotebookingPages.com is a site started by homeschool mom, Debra Reed. She not only owns the site, but she creates all the beautiful notebooking pages available to us.
Just look at all the great categories and subjects that come with the membership.
My first "look see" at my member center was just a bit overwhelming. There are literally THOUSANDS of pages.
Where to start?
What to do?
I decided to begin with Josiah. A very good place to start.
I narrowed down his choices and asked him what animal he would like to study heading into our summer.
The boy chose cats. He is a cat lover so no surprise there.
After that decision was made, I went to the Cat notebooking file.
My friends. There were so many choices. Pictures to color for the littles. Pages with just a few lines and a box to draw a picture in. A heftier report style page. I printed off what I think he could manage and we were off!
I need to confess my shame right here and now. I have half a dozen of beautiful little pictures on my camera of Josiah's progress along the way.
I CANNOT find my camera. And even worse than that is when I took pictures with my phone, my phone decided not to communicate with my computer. I can't even share them to my email.
WHY ME? I promise you would have been inspired.
But the show must go one and I could easily turn this review post into "Why Beke needs a nap and it is possible my camera ran away from home." Fun stuff.
Instead of spending the time wailing about losing things, I will do the best I can with a few screen shots.
You can see from this picture that Josiah doesn't have to form a complete report. He simply can record pertinent information. There are several other pages that can be used for reports, copywork or free writing. I asked Josiah to write about his love for cats.
The beauty of these Notebooking Pages is that it doesn't follow a particular curriculum. In fact, you can basically just use the library.
Around Memorial Day, we did a study on Georgia O'Keeffe. I wanted to spend some time staring at her painting, "Red Poppy." While, "Red Poppy" wasn't included in the picture study on Georgia O'Keeffe, I found plenty of pages to use as an artist study and we spent some time staring at some more of her paintings.
Here is a screen shot of the Red Hill White Snail picture study page. Basically, a picture study helps the student study art in a practical and thoughtful way. I generally like to ask challenge Josiah to give me his first impressions. I ask him what the picture makes him think of and then we start noticing all the details. The notebooking page gives us opportunity to record our impressions.
The Fine Arts section of NotebookingPages.com is my favorite. In a few weeks, I want to start reading about John Audubon. We found a gorgeous book at the library of his work and the Notebooking Pages helped us focus in our study.
I also really enjoy the Geography pages and plan on implementing those on a regular basis. We've kept a state notebook off and on through the years and having a Lifetime Membership to NotebookingPages.com gives me a good reason to be consistent! I don't have to go searching for materials online.
I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this product. I do know that there are those of you who have kids like Josiah and wonder how you can use notebooking pages.
I find that using notebooking pages eases Josiah's anxiety. He isn't presented with a blank piece of paper. Instead, he has a certain number of lines to write on and a goal he can reach.
Several of the notebooking pages have boxes that can be used to jot down information in. Josiah really doesn't like to draw so we look for pictures he can color or print off to add to our pages.
Another trick I use often is to make up a notebooking page right along with him. I can model what the page is supposed to look like. He can use my words as copywork. He is also dyslexic and needs just some extra encouragement. I have found that he feels much better about his progress if he has something he can refer to visually.
I suggest you go check out this product! Of course, you can always get plenty of mileage out of the free resources, but I know that the Lifetime Membership will make you smile. And possibly make your homeschool day a lot brighter.
You can connect with NotebookingPages.com via the following social media outlets. Don't forget to click on the banner to read more reviews.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debrareed.notebookingpages/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NotebookingPgs @NotebookingPgs
We had a membership before, too, and I had no idea what to do with it. I didn't realize all the things we could do with notebooking!
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