Story of the World Notebook

Recently I have received several questions about the history notebook I make for princess. So I thought that I would explain it in a post here as I hope that it will help many of you.


I prefer to make up our notebook ahead of time. I usually print out half a year at a time and bind it together because the whole year at once gets pretty thick :). Princess always makes her own cover as she likes to do that.
This year we bound our notebook at the top by punching two holes and inserting brad fastners, which I recommend that you tape in the back or they will pull out.


As for what's inside, I start with the notebook pages that I create.
I print one template for each chapter. Then as we read a section we add to our chapter notebook page. Sometimes princess will draw a picutre, sometimes not. Somedays I will have her copy her narration onto the page herself, sometimes I will write it for her depending on how much writing she has already done that day.



Next I add the coloring pages and the maps from the activity guide. I purchased the activity sheets as a pdf from Peace Hill Press halfway through the year, so it's been really easy to print them up and add them to the notebook. Next year, I will just copy them from the activity guide.


Then I add her copywork sheets.
I absolutely love Zane-Blouser website because you can make customized copywork sheets for free (just click on the get started button). So I take the list of copywork sentences I have, enter them in and print them out. I then put these sheets in her notebook.


Finally I add the project pages that I have created.
I count up the number of projects we have planned and print out that number of pages. Then put them in the back of her notebook.


For me I find it easier to have sections for each catagory (ie. notebook pages, maps and so on), but you could certainly arrange your notebook by SOTW chapter. It take quite a bit of effort on my part, but it makes our days go so much smoother. Princess really loves looking back at what we have studied and I'm grateful that I don't have to constantly keep track of papers to hole punch and put in her notebook. So there you have it, our SOTW notebooks.


ETA: All the pages (with the exception of the AG pages) and my plans are available for free here and at my yahoo group (link in the side bar).

Revisiting the LA notebook...

So after reading The Three R's by Ruth Beechick and rereading the grammar stage section of The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, I'm realizing that some things in the LA notebook are going to have to go. I was a bit ambitious and my desire is not to overload her this year. I'm working hard to find a balance between instructing and pushing.

So I have decided to take out the book review sheets. The main focus of our reading program will be fluency, but we will discuss the books orally so I can guage her comprehension. I will also be removing the vocabulary sheets. We will do vocabulary as it comes up in the read-alouds, but nothing formal. Finally I will not be expecting original works such as journal entries and alike. What remains is spelling, grammar, copywork, narrations and memory work.

I have also recieved a used Sonlight LA for easy readers (Thanks Audrey!). I'm not sure how we are going to incorporate this, but I really like what I see. I wish that Sonlight hadn't changed thier LA, I really like the older version, but I'm guessing that I am in the minority. I think that we will try using Sonlight's LA 4days(activity sheets and writing assignment) and FLL on the fifth day-doing 2-3 days at once. I think that we are just going to have to try it and see how it goes, if this is too much we will drop one of them.

The funny thing is that my handwriting hating princess saw one of the activity sheets from Sonlight's LA and asked me to explain it to her. After I did, she wanted to do it right then. She thought it would be so fun to copy sentences and then box, circle and underline. I guess we will wait and see.

Language Arts Notebook

It's almost done! I just have to finish the vocab sheets which I will do later. It's time for mommy's summer break!

The LA notebook has eight sections: reading narrations, spelling rules, grammar rules, copywork, read-aloud narrations, vocabulary, original works(such as journals) and finally poetry memorization. Can you tell I like to be organized? It looks like alot, but most of it will be done orally, so I guess it is alot of writing for me! Anyways here's what the sheets look like...

The reading narrations (which I call Tabitha's reviews, these are for the books she will read) and the spelling rules sheet(the grammar sheets look just like this).



















The copywork sheets which I made at Zane Blouser website and a sample of our read-aloud narrations from last year (I plan on doing the same thing next year).

















These are the vocabulary sheets (I got the words from Core 1 read-alouds and my biology program, we will do these orally over a week) and the poetry (we are using the poems laid out in FLL).

















It looks like it will be a good year and I'm anxious to get started!

Next year and our SOTW history notebook

I have been busy planning, planning, planning. Which I do love to do! I have all the books now and my teacher's notebook is put together. It includes the Core 1 IG, my plan sheets for math, LA, SOTW and electives, plus my science plans sheets. They are divided by week and all the important resource info for that week is behind the plans. I'm hoping this will make my life easier! I like the idea of having it all in one place. You can see our curriculum plans for 2008-2009 on the sidebar to the right.

Princess will have 3 notebooks; science, history and LA. Her science notbooks is put together, since we are using my biology plans. You can see what the notebook looks like here, it's the second two pages. I just finished her history notebook. Since I always enjoy see what others have done, here is our SOTW History Notebook (you can see my SOTW plans here)...

The cover and book review page (this is for the books we read in addition to Story of the World).

The narration page(for each section of SOTW, I got most of the pictures from here, its a very useful website!) and the copywork page (for each chapter-I can't remember where I got the list, but thank you for whoever put it together! I just typed them out on Zane-Blouser website and here they are) Finally, the project page(these are to document the projects we will do from the activity guide).

I am looking forward to seeing these completed! Now, I'm off to finish the LA notebook!