Laura,
One of the tough things for kiddos at the Bigger Heart's age is learning to write smaller and to use the provided space on a page well. Kiddos at this age either draw huge pictures or draw very small. There doesn't seem to be much in between! Messy writing often is the product simply because the kiddos are not very good at writing yet. It takes time to develop those skills. The notebook pages that we created for CTC on up require smaller writing and better sketching skills. The pages are beautiful and help showcase students' work. Notebooking pages for Bigger Hearts and Preparing Hearts need to serve a different purpose. They need to help kiddos grow in developing drawing and writing skills.
When I wrote Bigger Hearts, we had not created any notebooking pages yet. The concept was still new to us, and we desired to make the guide as economical as possible too. After using Bigger Hearts three different times with my own youngest three boys, I still feel that developing notebooking skills takes time. Throughout Bigger Hearts, my boys did learn so much about writing smaller, writing neatly, and using their blank page well. I did have to coach and help them as they made their pages. In looking at the guide from a parent's perspective, it can be challenging to help a student create a notebook page from scratch.
So, with our quest to aid the parent and child as much as possible, we are in the process of designing notebook pages for Bigger Hearts. These pages will also work with the older Bigger Hearts guide for most units with some exceptions. I am having to rewrite the directions for the notebooking days in the newest edition of the Bigger Hearts guide to work with the new notebooking pages. We are also adding a schedule for English 3 to the new edition of the Bigger Hearts guide as well for families who need that option for an older student.
We pray this new edition of the guide and the new notebooking pages will bless many families! It is a joy to be able to make changes and additions to the guides that we believe will make the products even better and more user friendly. The Bigger Hearts notebooking pages are geared for a much younger audience and are designed to give kiddos the space they need to develop their notebooking skills. The pages are being designed in our beautiful full-color format too!
Blessings,
Carrie
I feel it's one of the things I should be able to leave her to do on her own while I work with another child. We are finishing up week 15 of Bigger. I should add that we are finally to week 15 after working since September. 
I want to read that thread again to re-convince me and encourage me as to the "why" of having the child design their own page. 
Looking forward to possibly using this with my youngest when she gets to 3rd grade!
We are thoroughly enjoying our school year using Heart of Dakota and plan to continue! 
