Our first day 2008

Today was our first day of school. We spent the day looking at our new stuff and discussing what we would be doing. It was fun just hanging out and talking and getting back into a routine.

We looked through a book about nature journaling, and then went on a nature walk. I love nature walks because they help everyone appreciate the beauty that is around us and they always naturally lead to other lessons.

Does anyone else find this funny? We are in the middle of nature finding all kinds of cool nature things and what do you know, we find a cherry. From our Hi-Ho-Cherrio game.

Riley sketched a couple of things she found. These things led us into a conversation where I introduced her to compound words as she labeled her mushroom. We also talked about past tense and writing -ed when she wrote uprooted. I love the natural progression of learning this way.

Garrett and Tyler were looking at something with a magnifying glass which led to
melting chocolate with a magnifying glass in the sun...

And that led to…you guessed it, lighting leaves on fire with a magnifying glass, which led to a lovely lesson in fire safety and why burning our house down in the name of a science experiment could possibly lead to regret…and how we must try to avoid regret. Anyone feelin' an "If You give a Mouse a Cookie" book comin' on?

We also did our traditional diet coke and mentos experiment that we always do on the first day.

And then we took a break for showers.

We ended our day by meeting David at Incredible Pizza to celebrate the beginning of our school year.

I can not tell you how thankful I feel today that I get to do this with my kids. Sure it is challenging sometimes, but we are smack in the middle of each other’s lives, and I couldn’t be happier. It is truly a blessing.

As we get started on some of our units this week I will be posting what we are doing so stay tuned!

Why we choose notebooking

It may be because I have always been a scrapbooker at heart (no, I hardly ever take time to actually work on my scrapbook), but I think notebooking is the most effective way of organizing and learning for all ages.

We have notebooks for everything. Each notebook is a 3-ring binder and each child designs the front of the binder how they want. There is one for each subject we are studying. Most of our work gets put into these notebooks. At least the stuff worth looking back on. This includes photos of our activities and projects, papers, pressed leaves, recipes, you name it.


We have a box of page protectors and each child is responsible for putting their items in the page protectors and into their notebooks as they finish them. When we complete a unit, we have a whole book showing what we have learned.


My kids love to look back in their books. It is a source of pride for them and it provides great review and fond memories. I think they do their best work knowing that it will be displayed in their books, not just thrown away or forgotten.


It is also so simple. It is easiest to understand if you take a look at them. Here are some samples from our Oklahoma History notebooks, and some from our Nature notebooks.

Oklahoma History Notebooks

Here are some samples of a few of the things we included in our Oklahoma History notebooks. It really is a source of pride for them. When they know it is going in their book and not just getting stuck in a drawer, they seem to work harder at doing their best. It also allows them to see at a glance what all they have learned, and it is like a scrapbook of all of the fun memories we made doing Oklahoma history.




We sketched all of the state symbols and wrote what we learned about each.We painted headdresses and wrote what we learned about them.

We took photos of larger projects to put in the book. Anything that can't go on a page gets photographed for the notebook. We also made a teepee, a fort and a covered wagon that were photographed.

All reports and papers also go in.
We put in photos of our activities along with a description of the photos.

We did a ton of Oklahoma field trips. For each field trip we take, we fill out a form about the day and glue on a photo.

We write down all of the recipes that we try.

Nature Studies

We put a lot of focus on nature studies. It is great for building curiosity, research, and learning to appreciate our surroundings. In doing nature studies, we can cover writing, language, science, research skills, and art. We put things we learn about nature into our nature notebooks. They are 3-ring binders with page protectors for each page. They end up being kind of a scrapbook of our findings. Here are some samples of the types of things we do for our notebooks. Some of the pictures are a little light, but you can get the idea.

As they get older, their books become more advanced and you see more papers, poetry and diagrams.