A look inside our science notebooks

While finishing up our co-op work, I thought it would be kind of nice to show some of the actual work my children do for their notebooks. Instead of workbooks, we have folders and notebook pages we use to review our facts and retention of the info is so much better for us this way than with fill-in-the-blanks, and t&f questions. They love to show off their notebooks to friends and family, and explain most of the info while they look through their books.

We glue the folders onto cardstock with glue sticks, and then put the pages into page protectors. Page protectors are not necessary, because they do slow down the review and looking through the actual folders, but they preserve the folders-we never lose anything since we started using page protectors, and some of their work requires lots of little, bitty pieces.

We also print off lots of pics off the internet for them to use for collage pages or for their title page for each chapter. Then, we also print all sorts of photos we take at co-op, and they scrapbook them and add them to the appropriate lessons, so all their memories are preserved, and in one place.

As I read the lessons to the children, we have vocab pages I create for writing down the definitions of the countless vocab words in the lesson. They also work on coloring pages while I read, and it is amazing how much they absorb while they are listening and coloring. Sometimes I have a high-quality coloring book to use, often I just print some coloring page off the internet. While searching the internet takes time, I can find very specific pages when I want them, and it adds to their fun and helps cement the facts if they are coloring pictures of the comet or meteorite while we read about it.

I will buy some special scrapbook pages, and stickers if I can find them, and they really enjoy putting it all together to showcase their semester of study.

We have done 4 books of science this way, and look forward to doing Anatomy next year with a different approach-the Notebooking journals. We still plan to do folders at co-op time, and lots of diagramming and notebooking, along with lots of our own photos, and we will add those to a separate binder. We had the notebook journals for this year, but decided to just use a few pages out of them, and save them for the next time we do Astronomy.

Enjoy your tour through Kendell and Nick's binders, and see you next time

Thanks for stopping by

Blessings

Chris