notebooking

[Tami]

I'm starting FIAR with my 4 & 7 yo ds. It will be 7yo second time through some as we did row a few books two years ago with his older brother. This year we're going all out with FIAR and Beyond. I saw a few examples of notebooks people were doing and I love the idea. Where do you get some of the cute ideas? Like doing the mini books or finding poems or clip art about the subject? Are you spending a million hours searching online?? They are so creative but I'm not sure I can do it without a ton of time invested. Any tips on how to get started without me having to go buy or find a book on notebooking?? :group:
TIA!
Tami

[Lynna]

Here is a couple of my favorite links,

On this web site they have free templates for minute books, matchbooks, and much more.
http://www.notebookingpages.com/Notebooking_Pages_Free_Notebooking_Pages.html


This is a web site you have to pay to use, but they do have some things for free. What I do is print off the items I want and use them for notebooking. Like, we did How to Make an Apple Pie last week so I printed off a world map and the flags of the countries she visited. DS colored and we will put it all in his note book next week.
http://members.enchantedlearning.com/



On this website they sell all kinds of lapbook stuff. I like it because everyweek they give away something new. You just download it and use it when you need it.
https://www.homeschoolestore.com/catalog/index.php?affiliate_id=1112&osCsid=4q4i0028mpijkgtciafebpv2g1


This is a must have site. There are resourses for FIAR books every where you look. Notebook info, go along info, indexs and unit studies! There is always something there you can learn and use!
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/welcome.htm


This is a new find for me, the site has all kinds of resources but not FIAR specific. But if you looked you would find something of use!
http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/by-grade.shtml



I hope this helps.
Lynna

[Paige P]

Some people have had some lapbooking/notebooking classes/workshops (from what I can glean). I have not ;) I "borrow" other people's ideas or just do what I think would look like a good way to display the girls' work. From what I've seen, some people get very complex. For us, I want the girls' notebooks to display what THEY'VE done, not what I've done for them, so I keep things on their level and just glue in things they've colored, things they've told me that I've typed on the computer, things that dd1 has written about the topic, vocab books, etc.

www.homeschoolshare.com has a lot of FIAR resources, like vocab clip art that goes with the different stories or notebooking pages and some examples of lapbooks.

I think it's a great way to "store" their memories and let them flip back through the notebooks and review what you've done. I'd definitely start simple and see where it goes. As they grow and get more "able," things may get more complex.

Good luck :D

[Shari]

:hi: Tami,

This is my first year notebooking also, so I can't speak from experience but I wanted to share what REALLY helped me get started. Tomorrow we're starting our first FIAR book for this year. I was just going to do a very simple notebook but I viewed some of the pics of the notebooks and lapbooks others were doing and thought they were so cool that I decided I wanted to add some lapbooking to my notebooks. Not to mention my kids are crazy about flaps! (ds8 dd3) We'll actually be putting all of ours into a 12 x 12 scrapbook. I don't know how well this will work but I have some really nice ones for the kids and I want to use them.

I spent most of yesterday morning working on lapbook/notebook ideas but I think I can easily do them now for the rest of the year. I found a GREAT website for beginning lapbooking called www.squidoo.com/lapbooking/. It took me a while to research but not as long as I thought it would and I was able to pretty much just use this site and its links. There's tons of examples, directions, photos, links, tips for getting started etc. I feel like I just finished a Lapbooking course!

One of the things they recommend is to put together a reference lapbook that has examples and directions for each mini-book or idea you might want to use. Then when you plan your lessons you can just pull this out and see which mini-book or idea would fit the info you want in your notebook and have this in mind when you teach the lesson. It also makes it very easy for the kids to choose what to use. I spent about 2 hours making mine yesterday. It was very easy. I just used computer paper to make the examples and glued all of mine in a folder and wrote the directions for each inside the mini-books themselves. I have 12 different examples in mine and could have done even more.

I looked at the lessons I have planned for this week's FIAR selection and just made a note (next to the ones I want to include in the notebook)of which mini-book or notebook sheet I might want to use. This took me all of 10 minutes.

I wasn't going to spend the time putting together the reference notebook, but now I'm sure glad I did. Not only do I think it's going to make lapbooking way easier for us, but since I had to make an example for each one, I got to see firsthand how easy it really is. I've already made each one so it'll be that much easier next time. And my kids loved it. Hope this helps some!!

[Hannah in N.Ireland]

Aswell as some of the sites already mentioned I get alot of ideas from
www.thehomeschoolmom.com.

[ami*]

One of the things they recommend is to put together a reference lapbook that has examples and directions for each mini-book or idea you might want to use. Then when you plan your lessons you can just pull this out and see which mini-book or idea would fit the info you want in your notebook and have this in mind when you teach the lesson. It also makes it very easy for the kids to choose what to use. I spent about 2 hours making mine yesterday. It was very easy. I just used computer paper to make the examples and glued all of mine in a folder and wrote the directions for each inside the mini-books themselves. I have 12 different examples in mine and could have done even more.

This is a good idea. :) If you'd like, there are lots of templates on this page (http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.htm)that you could use to do it. You can refer back to it anytime you'd like to make some minit books without having to create them yourself. :)

[WendyW]

I can't believe this one has not been posted yet!
Hands of a Child sells pre-planned lap-books. Just print them on cardstock, cut, and fold. The child fills in the info. A few are specifically for FIAR books (see the "literature" section), but most are subject oriented.

http://www.handsofachild.com/2/