notebooking

or lapbooking, as it is also called, is a great supplement to our everyday curriculum. We don't do it as much as I'd like but when we do, it's great fun that reinforces what we've studied (much better than a memorize and regurgitate test would!)
Plus it's an excuse for the scrapbooking Mom to get out glue sticks with her non-crafting boys! Josiah recently did one on George Washington. He really admires our first President and happily chose him as the subject. Once we started gathering materials we realized there is a lot to this man! To share everything would make a pretty thick folder, so Josiah narrowed it down military exploits only, focusing on his time as a General. George Washington:the Soldier.I used to be very intimidated by notebooking (my perfectionist tendencies are always under the surface, threatening to keep us from so many unexplored areas) Notebooking CAN be very involved but if I keep it really, nauseatingly simple-it gets DONE. And that's the goal. Perfection is the enemy of completion.

So, how do we do a lapbook? We pick a subject. We get books from the library on it. We google it. we print out lots of interesting info and pictures (google:images is perfect for this) We cut and glue and title and make pull down folders for the various subject divisions. And all of this we paste into manila file folders, glued together to form a mini book.
Here is one of our favorite websites on this:
http://www.squidoo.com/lapbooking