Interactive Notebooking

Notebooking is an activity I have discovered this year and have fallen in love with. It’s easy, it’s meaningful, and the boys love it. In our homeschool, we use two different styles of notebooking. There is traditional notebooking (which I will blog and link to at a later date) and there are interactive notebooks which I came across more recently and love! These are hands-on activities put out by Carson Dellosa Education and come in a variety of subjects including math, science, words study, language arts and seasonal. The idea is to have the children complete an interactive activity on one notebook page and then use the next page to show their learning and skill mastery. I have included a few examples of the pages my boys have completed. Why do interactive notebooks work for us? First, my boys love it! When I tell them we are notebooking I get “yays!” instead of the typical moaning about school time (we are still working on this). The activities are fairly quick and easily show me if they have mastered a skill or need more practice. Monkey loves “cutting” and it’s an excellent way to sneak in some extra fine motor practice for Mr. Man. I also love that, after an activity is completed, there is an opportunity for the kids to tap into their own understanding, personalize their work, and become active participants in their own learning. This is also a great way to engage them and get them ready for a more traditional style of notebooking. One of my favorite things about the interactive notebooks is that I can use them with both boys and differentiate the activity to fit their individual needs.

On this particular day, we were learning about the five senses. I was easily able to alter the activity so one child could focus on labeling the picture and the other on simply identifying the parts.

I would not use these books as my sole curriculum for a given topic for the year, as I do not think the subjects are complete enough to cover an entire course of study, but they are definitely a wonderful add on to other curriculums you may be using. I find them wonderful for the days when plans get changed, mom hasn’t prepared as well as she needed to, or the boys are just extra squirrely and sitting still isn’t an option.

This page I loved because I didn’t even know he could read number words! I wrote the numbers, gave him the words and was shocked when he did this independently. What a great skill assessment!

(This post contains affiliate links, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. However, I never recommend an item unless we use it and love it!)