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I am so pleased with everything!!! The teacher manual is awesome!! I love the layout of it and how each days directions are right there - not a lot of flipping around all over the place. Thank you for all your hard work, Carrie!!

My question is about the notebooking. I have saved the thread on Julie's post with all the pictures of her Bigger set up - is there just one 3-ring binder needed for all the notebooking? How big does the binder need to be? Do others keep a separate binder for different subjects? Also, with the science lab worksheets, what all needs to be on those 35 pages? (hypothesis/conclusion, anything else?)

Thanks everyone! I am so excited to start this August, but want to start getting ready soon, as summer gets so busy. Hope everyone has a blessed summer!!

I also wanted to pick you ladies' brains about how you do your notebooking. I have 3 who would be using 3 ring notebooks/binders this year, and they are just so cumbersome. I really hate trying to store them on my shelf. Do any of you have creative ideas for storing the notebooking pages so that you don't have to have so many 3 ring binders? I had thought about using an expandable file folder thingy that would be separated into categories for history, science, writing, etc. and then when the file gets full putting them into the binders that are stored away somewhere.

There's got to be a better way. If anybody has any ideas I would love to hear them. I hope I didn't highjack your question, Kristen. I just would love to hear how other people do their notebooking.

As far as the science pages go, I made some up on the computer that included the unit # and the day in the unit that it was for, then I had the question (I would often type the question in from the manual so my ds wouldn't have to write it), the guess, the procedure and the conclusion. I would leave a lot of the space open in the middle under procedure so that they could draw what we had done in the experiment.

HTH,

We are finishing up with Bigger in the next couple of weeks. It's been a wonderful year! I decided to use a 1 inch 3-ring binder for history and another for science. I like to use page protectors. I used 2 tab dividers to divide each notebook in half. For history, I labeled them, "Projects" and, "Notebooking." For science, the labels were, "Notebooking" and, "Experiments." It worked incredibly well. I made sure to cut down all my construction paper to 8 1/2 X 11 so that the projects would fit in the binder. For the science experiments, I did as the other poster did and made a master lab sheet that I printed out each week. I also made master copies of notebooking pages with lines and the top, some with lines at the top and bottom, and some with lines at the top and a black line going down the middle to divide the page in half. Those were the most common forms used. It is handy to just pull out a page that already has the lines needed. For history, I sometimes made a notebooking page on my computer. I would copy a photo from the internet and type the person's name or draw lines for my son to add a title. It made the pages a little more interesting with the photo. That's up to you. You don't need to do the extra work, but it made for a really nice notebook. I used the black and white composition books for all the other subjects.
hth,
Laura

Thank you both for your replies. I would like to know if there are any other suggestions other than binders too. I like the idea of using a sketch book, I may try that instead. Anyone reading this who has used sketch book have any comments? Thanks for the details on the science lab sheets, that helps me a lot.

I've been pondering about how best to handle this, too. Thanks for your input, ladies!

Can you give me the link to Julie's post with the pictures!
Thanks
Stephanie

You've gotten some great ideas here already! We've done smaller binders, separated out for history, science, and copywork before, and enjoyed that too. I do think it's a good idea to consider the space you have and do what works best (a.k.a. what won't drive you nuts all year )! I think the sketchbook could work for the copywork of the poetry very nicely. You could have a 2 page spread with the poem copied on one side, and the child could illustrate the poem on the other side. (One of my sons loved to illustrate his poetry, the other one not so much. So you can play that by ear.) As far as the science, if you look on Day 3 in the Science Exploration box of the daily plans, you'll see the steps for doing the lab sheets, and you can make a standard one if you'd like to lessen the writing for the child. PHFHG has a standard lab sheet for that can be copied at that point, but in BHFHG, the idea is to have the students write and remember the parts of the experiment to remember them better. However, for my young 7 yo doing Bigger, I did make a lab sheet for him, as the other writing in Bigger was/is enough of a challenge. A sketchbook would be neat for the science experiments too, otherwise. Here's a link for my getting ready for Bigger, but of course, my way of doing it is just one way, so be sure to customize it to fit your needs:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5531

The "Introduction" of Bigger Hearts is important to read as well, as it gives options for storing dc's work and can help as you choose what's best for your family. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

It would be more expensive, but a hinged scrapbook binder with page protectors would work too.

My DH made me simple curved shelves that fit into a corner, and because of the shape, they work perfectly for 3-ring binders.

I use a large single binder divided with tabs for different subjects. I also include anything else "educational" during the year: Cub Scout papers, artwork, swim lesson reports, brochures from a museum we visited, etc. Then at the end of the year I print off a couple pages of pics of DS doing things for school and put these in as well. It makes a wonderful summary/portfolio of the year and what we learned.

Thank you all for such good ideas. I will consider all the ideas and look at my shelf space!

We are currently using sketchbooks for notebooking--one for science and one for all the history notebooking. I like it so much better than the binders. What happens in my house with binders is that half the papers never make it back into the plastic page protectors...instead they are put into the binder pocket. It make for messy binders and lost and crumpled papers. Plus, for drawing maps my kids would want to use larger, thicker paper and then we couldn't get it to fit in the binder very well. The sketch paper is thicker than copy paper which makes it especially nice for drawing. I am wondering if some of papers will eventually loosen up and fall out of the sketch book, but so far that hasn't happened.