What is Notebooking? An HHO Quick Tutorial

What is Notebooking, Anyway? Is it even”School”?

Plus scroll down and grab our Free Blank Notebooking Page Templates that can be used for any topic!

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Notebooking has been gainly even more popularity in the homeschooling world, along with the rise of using Charlotte Mason’s gentle educational techniques.

But if you aren’t familiar with notebooking or how it works, it can be difficult to get an idea of how to get started with it.

So, if you are wondering “What is Notebooking?” because you are not entirely certain what it involves, read on; this article is for you.

However, if you’ve already “been there/done that” with this style of homeschooling and already know the answer to the question, What is Notebooking? be sure to check out our hundreds of free printable notebooking pages.

What is Notebooking, Anyway?

Simply put, notebooking is writing down in a notebook or on a printable what you have learned about a specific subject, like the life cycle of a frog, a biography of George Washington, or even perhaps about a country like Costa Rica.

Notebooking is really just a form of journaling about the topics your kids have studied or experienced.

Often drawings, charts, or timelines are added to show what your kids know without having to use sentences (this helps to increase their understanding of the subject and helps struggling writers).

Your kids can easily use a spiral-bound notebook organized by subject or by school term, but spiral notebooks have a tendency to get torn up or lost.

To create a nicer, more durable 3-ring binder notebook, many homeschool moms use printable note booking pages.

Notebooking is NOT just one more thing to add to your homeschool day and it’s NOT busywork. You’ll want to use notebooking INSTEAD of a curriculum with a bunch of busywork pages to complete each day.

Is Notebooking Really “School”?

Notebooking often seems too easy to really be “school”. I mean, it’s not like an expensive curriculum aligned to a bunch of buerocratic standards.

Simply put, yes, notebooking is school. And it’s so, so much better than a curriculum in a box!

There are many benefits to notebooking. Here are a few.

• Notebooking can be used for any and all subjects. Yes, even high school!

• You can stop using tests to figure out what your child does and doesn’t know.

• Students are able to study a subject and learn things of interest to them instead of just finding answers to worksheet questions and immediately forgetting all about it.

• Students are more likely to remember things that they write down, especially if they’ve reworded the idea into their own words and thoughts.

• Your kids can express themselves creatively (through sketching, painting, journaling, or scrapbooking) with the freedom notebooking allows instead of answering multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank questions on a worksheet.

• You can ditch the boxed curriculum and all the checklists of busy work it requires.

• It is a less painful way for some students to strengthen their writing skills since they are writing in smaller chunks and about things that are of interest to them.

• You can use pre-made notebook pages for copywork or narration.

• Non-fiction books often lend themselves to being used right alongside notebooking. And fiction books always work with note-booking to summarize what has happened in the story or chapter.

If you haven’t tried notebooking in your homeschool, I hope you will print out a few of our free notebooking pages and give them a try. I think you and your students will really enjoy the freedom that notebooking allows!

More Notebooking Resources for Your Homeschool

For more details about getting started with notebooking, check out this helpful article, Notebooking 101, from Debra at Notebooking Pages

Shelly has created a ton of videos about notebooking and how she uses it in her homeschool. Here’s the link to her Notebooking Playlist

Don’t forget to pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it again later.

And be sure to follow Homeschool Helper Online on Pinterest for more affordable homeschooling resources!