If anyone has used this I am curious as to how it has worked for you. This is our first year with TOG and I and considering using it.

Thank you!

Hi,

Welcome to TOG! I think we have used the pages you are asking about, but I may be thinking of the wrong thing. Hopefully, this will be helpful either way.

We have used the pages posted to the TOG Loose Threads forum for Notebooking/Timelines. She has provided several different templates for notebooking with TOG in both landscape and portrait layouts. We have really enjoyed using these for our history portfolio. My daughter experimented with these at the end of 4th grade and is still using them now in 6th grade. In the beginning, I helped her plan her pages, but most of the time she does everything on her own. Sometimes I help her find images online to use for the timeline section, but most of it is her creative ideas for sharing what she's learned in history. Although, this can easily be done without the pages, we found that it gave us a place to start and helped her know how to plan the pages.

Our dd's pages tend to have a lot of writing. Some pages are more like a personal journal, sharing what she learned that week or what we did on a field trip. Sometimes she includes a map of an area we studied over several weeks. She doesn't do the timeline every week, but does use that section a lot. She will either print out images for the timeline section or she just writes the dates and key names in the space provided. If she doesn't want to do a timeline that week, she either fills the space with larger pictures to illustrate the current week in history or uses that space as another journal box.

Last year we completed Y3 in TOG, so she took time to cover the presidents and key events in history every week. She often does book reviews on the read alouds and literature selections. Sometimes she include photos of her projects and celebrations. There are so many ways to do these books! Sometimes there are too many ideas and it's hard to know where to begin.


A few tips we've learned along the way:

We print our pages on cardstock and then bind them as a booklet at the end of the year. I have used the cardstock that looks like parchment paper. They come out very nice and you can print them yourself using her complimentary files.

If you have a perfect Paula (like mine), you may find it helpful to limit how much work they do each week and limit the choices. Our dd could spend 6-10 hours a week on portfolio alone, and that is just too many hours! Initially, I gave her free reign to do it however she wanted, but learned along the way that she needed me to help her keep it simple and save her from laboring to make every page perfect. We are still finding that balance for her.

If your child does not like to write or finds it overwhelming to fill in all the space, I would suggest creating 1-2 basic designs for them to follow unless they have a fresh idea that week. Depending on which template you choose that week, you can decide what would go in each box. This saves a lot of time on the planning step and allows them to get started right away. The template already provides a framework, but we found it helpful to designate certain boxes for certain topics, just to move things along. This helps them to jump in quickly and not spend a lot of time trying to decide how to start. If they have a fresh idea one week, you can allow them to do that instead. Once they become comfortable with notebooking, you won't have to guide them as much on what to do.

Here's a quicklist of ideas for topics you could assign to a box each week:
*overview of the presidents
*literature or read aloud summary
*timeline-key people/dates for that week
*a graphic printed from the internet or a magazine photo
*a biography of a key person studied that week
*a recipe from the current time period
*paper dolls
*describe a field trip or special event
*creative writing or the assigned writing from TOG
*whatever you child found most interesting that week

Younger children can do more drawing or dictation, rather than so much writing. However, I think the lapbooks are a better choice for younger students. Whatever you choose to use, just keep it simple for mom and it's more likely to happen each week. Anything elaborate or time consuming tends to get bumped when life gets busy (which is most of the time )

Sometimes it works better to type up their summary so you can print & paste it onto the portfolio page. If my daughter wants to write something that is especially long and detailed, we just print it out and make a booklet to paste onto her portfolio page. Many of her reports and celebration presentations have been re-sized in order to include the content in her portfolio.

I hope this helps you see how flexible this can be. We have loved using Debra's notebooking pages for our portfolio. I have never used anything except these blank pages, but would consider purchasing some of her pages for other subjects. Her designs are beautiful and really help to streamline the process.

Hope this helps!
Eia

Thank you for the info! We start today and I will give the notebooking pages a go.