Notebooks for homeschooling

I love workbooks!  I love workbooks for so many reasons.  They are pretty!  You can mindlessly plan.  They remind me of being a small child playing school for some odd reason.  I love them, they get me excited about what adventure I am going to take.  What I do not like, it they cost money, a reasonable amount, but when you are buying multiples, it adds up.

Trying to keep our cost down.  I figured we would use notebooks and at $0.20 each, they are a steal.  For me, they are so boring!  To change that, I decided to go through my untouched scrapbook supplies to see what we could use.  (For those of you gasping that it is obvious that I used Creative Memories AWESOME paper and stickers for notebooks.  Yes I did.  Because I went digital and I can use that artwork over and over {{insert raspberries}} SO ha!)

Well we turned it into a day of making things pretty.  I feel between these 2 selections, I will easily know who’s is who’s.

Here they are all done.  3 for the Kindergartener, 3 for my 1st grader, 1 for the know-it-all 3 year old, who could not handle not being part of something.  Then there are 3 for me, 1 for my thoughts on our homeschooling plans, 2 for plans with my blogs.

 

Here is an example of how I am using the handwriting notebook. first off, all the notebook paper is college rule, this way using 2 lines is a great size for writing for their ages.  This is my 1st graders writing.  She traces and then writes on her own.  I have the lines to show top and bottom to help her know where to stop.  I made the mistake of not highlighting the lines only once. 

I am still fine tuning our curriculum plan for the upcoming year.  We will be reading a lot of books and doing unit studies.  I figured we will linger in each unit study for as long as we are enjoying it.

The other aspect is, I have no idea how long I will stick with this.  I have a thing for notebooks.  I collect them.  There are hundreds of them.  I seem to gravitate to them and here I am conditioning my children to do the same.  Hmm, I might need to set a jar up for therapy at later date for them.

~trish