This post is to display my journal/notebook for our homeschool. I am participating in the summer journaling class at Project Based Homeschooling and am very excited about what I am learning. There was a call to share what we are already doing/using so here it is.
I am in a simple composition note book that I rescued almost completely empty from one of my kids.
I covered the front with duct tape and a little graphic. These are things normally found around our house. It’s probably the worst duct tape job every but the cover was SO ugly! Next time, I may or may not do it more carefully. I wanted to to be sturdy (and it is)
I write with micron pens, colored pencils, Staedtler Triplus Fineliners and often whatever other pen I have nearby (I have a bit of a pen/marker obsession and so do my kids). When I fill up this book, I think I will switch over to a grid format instead. Also, I have started writing on one side of the page only because I don't really love the bleed through on some of my markers and pens.
I am using a modified Bullet Journal approach. After a six-month quest to find the “perfect planner” I knew INSTANTLY that this system, with just a few small tweaks, would be perfect for how we live and learn.
As a follower of Christ, my daily planning and end of the day reflection are focused on prayer and what God has for us each day. In the Bullet Journal method, the author/inventor of that system uses his daily pages to remind him of his to do's - I use it to record what was done that day - so it is a log, not a list of things to do. (One exception to this listed below)
The BIGGEST things I gleaned from the Bullet Journal method are using an Index, a monthly calendar and a goals page. I set aside 4 pages at the front for the Index. On that page, I put the date and a title of my Bible journal entry. (This could be observations on your kids and projects too. I tend to do that with this blog instead)
Here is my current index page. Each day, I record a “title” for that day’s journal entry along with any Bible verses I noted. (I also keep a copy of this in Evernote, which makes it searchable.)
This is the 2014 printed calendar I have taped into my inside front cover. (Available at calendarpedia)
Here is my current calendar page as recommended in the BJ system (again this is a log). This is for events, activities, field trips. I color and doodle for fun and because my kids like to do it to – we share designs and supplies. This is NOT required!
On the facing page is June goals and I also added prayer to this section - ongoing stuff goes here because I refer back to it regularly. It does no good to have a goals page without ever looking at it!!
It's a little hard to see in the above my own little hack was that I took a highlighter and marked the edges of ALL of the May pages with blue when it was over (that's when I started using the Bullet Journal system, coming from a rather unwieldy 3 ring binder format). When I started my June pages, I started highlighting them with yellow instead. This helps me get to where I am going when I am referring back to stuff.
As a side note, I made an entire Nature Journal like this. There are six sections (butterflies, mushrooms, plants, animals etc), each with the edges highlighted. Some people use washi tape for this but I honestly can't tape in a straight line and I didn't want the expense or thickness of it.
Here are some views -- the edges show the different colors
Each section has an index at the front and they are also colored on the edge. I am super behind on the right now because we have had a HUGE flurry of nature sightings with Spring here. We see and photograph something almost every day. The question marks are to remind me that we need to ID the item. On this one, it says "fill" in pencil for p 8 and 9 because we got out of order pasting in photos!
Here is what an entry page looks like. We print on paper at home and use Scotch Wrinkle Free Glue Sticks to paste in the photos
The red edge is easy to see here! Here is one more from a different section. The page numbers are written in the upper corners and they correspond to the numbers on the index page. The numbers go up in the whole notebook - they don't start over in each section.
OK, back to my journal. Like I said, the fact that we belong to Christ informs who we are and what we do so that is the bulk of my journal. Each morning, I quietly pray and study and receive revelation and insight into our kids, our priorities and our day. What I learned is often a topic of conversation as we go about our days. Some times I write everything out, sometimes I copy passages into my journal (from books I am reading too including hows/whys of home education), sometimes I do word art or something like visual notes. I have recently become exposed to sketchnoting and I LOVE it.
After this time, I create a daily homeschool log page for each day that includes my 5 kids (our eldest is graduated) PLUS a box for "Group" stuff (all of us). We are unschooling with a heavy project basis. Some things they have been working on are: cooking, gymnastics, photography and movie making, a long series of field trips exploring the Mississippi River Recreation Area (about 72 miles going through the Twin Cities), drawing - digitally and analog, painting, music - violin / piano / ukulele, gardening and a few other things.
After reading Lori’s journal class so far, I see that I might like to add more observations on the kids’s learning into my journal in the future. I usually do this on my blog pages with photos but I am getting a little behind and would like the notes from my journal, too. Also, I don’t want to publish their areas of struggle for everyone to see but I certainly want to attend to and support it. There have been journal entries where I have written some of these things down but they tend to show up on the prayer page or on a day when I am looking for a little more than I might be seeing. So I write them down to process, pause and wait so that I do not end up crushing them with negative feedback. One area we ALL need to work on is working through to completion on things. I think it would be great to record WINS here and notes about how to encourage and support when the opposite is happening a lot.
NOW, Here is the exception to my "rule" of this being a log and not a to-do list. Items with a BOX on this page are things that they REALLY need to be worked on that day - usually because of an upcoming lesson or deadline, of which we have very few. I try not to load up on HAVE TO's. But on this day, my eldest daughter needed to work on her standardized testing (but did not, so it is not checked) and 2 girls were in need of violin practice...but didn't complete it. However, I can see from the upper left box marked "group" that we were all super busy processing and recording an absolutely EPIC field trip the day before and took advantage of one of the first nice days of Spring by going to the park. All this is blogged for May 20 - 21.
One final thing - I taped in an envelope, a ribbon marker and a piece of elastic on the back cover of my notebook to hold a little plastic ruler/template thingy we acquired somewhere from our public school days and my favorite pen.
I am very comfortable with how this is working for our family. I LOVE the flexibility of being able to use as many or as few pages as I want/need for any given day. I do not "work ahead" by coloring the edges or creating the calendar or goals page for the next month until I get there. This notebook is out and open pretty much ALL the time so I can jot something down onto the activities list as needed. If I happen to be without it and want to record a reminder to write something down, I will send myself an email on my Android phone on the fly. I have Google Now with voice recognition so I just say something like this to my oh phone “Note to self – we talked about fractions and how they work on the way to May’s house today.”
RESOURCES
DIY Composition Notebook Planners & Bullet Journal
Lettering and Doodling and Zentangles (OR NOT!!! totally optional, I just think it’s FUN)
