From Our House to Yours
Keepsake Notebooks to Treasure
We have loved using Heart of Dakota’s (HOD’s) notebook pages through the years! Our bookshelves are lined with notebooking keepsakes, beautiful memories of our time spent in each HOD guide. Each son’s notebooks are kept safe in 3-ring binders lined up neatly in a row, from start to finish. From time to time, we take them out. We are amazed at the visual record of progress in so many skills! Writing, drawing, research, outlines, bulleted notes, timeline entries, geography mapwork, written narrations, history projects, summaries, and the list goes on. My sons can hardly believe the progress they’ve made! They also love remembering the living books they’ve read. Their responses to those books are on page after page of their notebooks. Each of their notebooks are the same, but each are different. I love that!
Writing Preferences
My oldest son preferred to use good, old Ticonderoga pencils in his notebooks. He loved how sturdy they are because he likes to press hard when he writes. My middle son loved clicky pencils. He preferred the clicky pencils with heavier lead. He loved their precision, and I must say he especially loved clicking them, often. My youngest son first loved Ticonderoga pencils, largely because I bought an electric pencil sharpener. This was new, fun, and he spent long periods of time enjoying sharpening his pencils. Then, however, he decided he’d switch to clicky pencils. He liked certain colors and special erasers. Recently, he wanted to switch to pens. As we were making this switch, I spoke with a wonderful fellow HOD mom on the phone. She mentioned her kiddos enjoying using electric erasers. Well, THAT sounded FUN!
A Valentine’s Day Gift That Was a Hit
That very evening I went home and searched for electric erasers. I knew my gadget-loving youngest son would LOVE these! Valentine’s Day was also coming. Along with the chocolate, I like to give some new fun school supplies. The electric eraser along with uniball pens (and new clicky pencils for my middle and oldest sons) were perfect! Just a few AA batteries, and my son was happily using his electric eraser along with his uniball pens! The electric eraser is precise and easily erases any errors he makes on his notebooking pages. In fact, he can even erase colored pencils and markers! Today, I saw him erasing part of his printed school schedule. (Very funny, Emmett. The school schedule still stands.) There are LOTS of electric erasers, but here is the one we got. Anyway, this was such a wonderful idea from a fellow homeschool mom that I thought I’d pass it on to you in case you have a gadget, pen-loving kiddo!
In Christ,
Julie
