Types of Notebooking PagesI would generally say that there are two basic styles of notebooking pages - homemade (or scrapbooky) notebooking pages and template notebooking pages. We use a variety of both types of pages in our notebooks. This website began because I knew that notebooking was the way for us to go, but I needed greater flexibility it getting it done. We were still in our early years of homeschooling. I had four children in grades 1st-4th, one in junior high, and two still in diapers. Remember those years? Are you there right now? Making the notebooking templates that we have here at the site made notebooking so much easier for us to carry out on a regular basis - then and now. Now though, since the kids are older and we are all a lot more experienced, we do an assortment of notebooking pages mixing and matching whatever works and whatever fits the kids' fancy at the time! Below I have explained what I would refer to as the two basic types or styles of notebooking pages with some examples from the kids' notebooks.Homemade Notebooking PagesHomemade notebooking pages are the best in my opinion. They are definitely the craftier of the two types and therefore are the most interesting to look at when completed. For this type of page, you might start with a piece of heavy-weight paper or piece of scrapbooking paper cut to size. Onto this you would add the kids' writing components which may be glued onto another scrap piece of paper of a complimentary color or on a piece of paper cut to a specific shape to match the topic being notebooked. You might add foldable cards to the page titled with a key question on the outside and answers on the inside. You could crop photos with special scissors to add to the page or add fancy borders in a similar fashion. Use stamps to add fun lettering or designs to the page. We like using stamps on a plain colored page to design our own background - especially fun for nature notebooking. The sky is the limit! You can add anything you like to your pages. Let the kids create everything from the very simple to the most detailed of pages. There are no rules!Here's a page Austin did one year on poison ivy - a topic near and dear to this highly allergic child. I helped him with this layout at the time because he found the blank page a bit intimidating, but we used his ideas for what he wanted on the page. I have found that if you give the kids some inspiration or a little help with their layouts in the beginning, it builds their confidence for the next one. Start simple and add new components from time to time and they will soon be building their own pages all on their own and adding their own new ideas.   Something that works well for kids who may need help laying out their page is to put together a few basic layouts that you know will work for a variety of topics. Simple things like....a big box at the top with lines at the bottom, small boxes at opposite corners with lines in the middle, etc. Then the kids could just choose their paper colors and follow your guide. Take a look through some of our free pages for layout ideas. You will need some lined paper for the kids to do their writing on. If you need primary lined paper, I have some in our free pages in a variety of sizes. Feel free to print these out and cut them to the sizes you need them for your child's notebooking page. Here are some pages that Taylor & Jessie put together: (some clipart is from www.usborne-quicklinks.com and the timeline figures are from www.homeschoolinthewoods.com)   And here is a page from Alex (very simply made all on his own!):  Template Notebooking PagesTemplate notebooking pages account for much of our notebooking pages. They make notebooking a cinch to implement. With our large family, I am all about saving time and getting the most from our resources. So we use notebooking templates most of the time.A notebooking template page would be a page that is already pre-designed with framed boxes, lines, and sometimes clipart or borders. You just choose the type of paper that you want to use and then print it out. This is what we have available here at our site. Without the template pages, notebooking would have been put on the shelf not too long after we started or at least on the backburner until all of my kids were old enough to not need hand-holding through the process. The templates make for quick notebooking anytime. You can create a special "notebooking" folder on the desktop of your computer to save all of your notebooking templates in for easy retrieval later. Now that our site's notebooking sets are available on CD, the kids can just pop in the CD, find the set they want and choose their pages quickly. What you will find in my available notebooking sets is a lot of variety! Once I design a page, I make several variations to it so that it will work for a variety of ages. I have all ages of children with all different writing and artistic abilities. So this variety means that there is something that will work for each of them. Some days they want to add art, some days they do not. Some days they have lots to write about, some days they do not. There is always some layout that will work. That's why I love using the template notebooking pages. The notebooking will get done - no excuses! There are lots of free template notebooking pages available here at the site and we also have a growing collection of specialized notebooking sets available for you to purchase. Here are some of the kids' finished notebooking pages created from templates:     |
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