Notebooking Testimonials If you’re like most homeschooling moms I meet, I bet you’re tired. I WAS TIRED. Tired of chasing after the perfect homeschool method, curriculum, and schedule. Tired of worrying about whether my kids are behind or ever going to catch up. Tired of endless hours spent preparing, teaching, and grading lessons no one enjoys. For six years, we did school right up to dinner, trying to check all the right boxes. Of course, my day didn’t end there. After dinner, I had piles of worksheets, workbooks, and tests to grade FOR MULTIPLE CHILDREN. It was exhausting! It wasn’t working. It certainly wasn’t sustainable. I WANTED TO GIVE UP. I wanted to give up the boring textbooks. I wanted to give up the complicated curriculum. I wanted to give up the busywork that was sucking the life out of my kids. I was in a constant state of self-doubt. What is homeschooling supposed to look like? Am I doing enough? Am I ruining my kids? How long can I keep doing this? Am I good mother? On-and-on the spiral went. I WANTED MORE FOR OUR HOMESCHOOL. I wanted more than just checking off boxes. I wanted more than just grades on a report card. I wanted more than just doing “better” than public school. I wanted to simplify our homeschool, make it more engaging, more life-giving. I wanted to cuddle on the couch with interesting and inspiring books and have engaging conversations. I wanted to follow rabbit trails and my kids’ interests. I wanted to to develop thinkers, writers, lifelong learners. More than anything, I wanted the freedom in our homeschool to enjoy the journey wherever it led us day-to-day with no regrets. AND THAT’S WHEN I FOUND THE PERFECT HOMESCHOOL TOOL… Notebooking Pages LIFETIME Membership I am a homeschooling mommy of four children, ages 4-14. I am also a missionary in a remote African village. I have been teaching my children for 10 years, and haven’t yet found my fit in the curriculum world. I have my kids creating binders for Bible history and geography with pages I create & they fill in & decorate. I had no idea that what I was doing was called notebooking or that anyone else did it. I stumbled upon your site a few days ago and can’t get enough! We only have internet access three times a year when we’re in the capital city, so I’ve ordered your CD with ALL your pages. I am really excited about incorporating your pages into my kids’ binders that they started last year. You have blessed our family tremendously. I plan to tell all the other missionary – homeschool moms here about your site. Most here use Sonlight, and these pages would be fabulous for the kids to use to keep a record of what they’ve learned from the books they’ve read. Tina Gebhard West Africa My kids and I absolutely LOVE your notebooking pages! They look incredible and are so easy to use! I love that you can use them for older or younger ones also! All the options for each product page is wonderful!!! Thank you so much for such a helpful and affordable creation! Julie Tennessee Product: Nature Study Pages Wow! Notebookers and Charlotte Mason fans pay attention! Here is a great resource for you. And for those who don’t fit the above descriptions, you may very well like this, too. I think everyone from unschoolers to the classically minded could make good use of this nature-journal facilitating software. The first part of this computer CD contains a slew of nature notebooking pages. At the beginning there is a Nature Study Notebook Cover and suggestions for using the pages themselves, which are categorized in eight sections. First comes the “7 Days of Creation,” with several templates for journaling and illustrating. All of the pages that have writing space include pages with primary-style lines (with a dotted line between two solid lines) and pages with standard lines for older students. Next is “All about Animals,” which has six sub-sections: Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Invertebrates, Mammals, and Reptiles. Among the myriad options, there is a page for drawing animal tracks, an “observation jar” page for drawing little captive creatures, and lifecycle pages. The spider page has a place for sketching the web, and there is an arthropod page with a sectioned template for drawing the head, thorax, and abdomen. A nice feature found here and in the plant section is a “word bank” where specific terms are printed at the bottom of the page for student reference–good for building vocabulary and spelling skills. The “Habitat” chapter is most comprehensive: arctic, beach, creek and pond, desert, forest, jungle, mountains, plains, prairie, rain forest, streams and rivers, rotting logs, savannah, sea and ocean, under a rock, underground, and yard. I especially like the last one, as that is a familiar and convenient habitat for children to explore! Rotting logs and under a rock sound like fun too. The “Nature Log and Journaling Pages” are lined with “date,” location,” and “notes” column headings. There is a generic page and one for each season as well as various template pages with space for writing and drawing. “Plants, Flowers, and Trees” come next. The flower pages have places for leaf and flower/petal detail. The tree pages have spaces to illustrate the bark, leaves/needles, and the flowers/fruit/nuts/cones. There is also a place for bark rubbings. The last three sections are “Rocks and Minerals,” which includes igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks as well as minerals; “Seasons”; and “Weather,” with all kinds of daily, weekly, and monthly weather logs among other things. There is even a page for the water cycle. Each section contains a cover page for separating each category and organizing your nature notebook. The template pages are most attractive, with beautiful illustrations and pleasing layout. At the end of this Nature Notebooking half of the CD is a bonus section. It is an amazing assortment of nature-themed fun frames and borders. These could be used as additions to your children’s nature journal or would be perfect for letter-writing or stories. The author also suggests using them for copywork and dictation. There are rainbows, birds, flowers, leaves, seashells, snowflakes, frogs, and butterflies to name a few. Some are black and white, most are in color and range from quaint to “cartoon-y” in style. In general, they lean toward “girly” in their appeal. Whew! Okay, so now comes the second half of the CD, which is North American Birds Notebooking Pages. There are 680 notebook pages for 97 types of birds, and there are blank templates for adding other birds. Again, you will find both primary and regular-style line options for all the pages that have journaling space. Seven different page templates are available for each bird. Some are full-page illustrations for coloring. Where it applies, male and female species are shown. Many of the pages have a space for the common and scientific name. One template has a range map printed on it. We usually school year-round, trying to plug in some fun stuff in the summer months along with the usual catch-up. I’ve added “Nature Notebooking” to my summer to-do list, and the kids are 100% behind me. I will also make sure we take pertinent pages (animals, habitats, birds, frames, and borders) with us on our family vacations from now on!