Homeschooling Tips from A to Z for 2023: The Letter N

Hi Friend,
Welcome back! We have made it to the letter “N” with our homeschooling tips. There’s not too many tips for “N” like there were for the “M” post, last week. 

Homeschooling Tip #1: Neighbors & the Needy

There’s a lot of creative ways that you can use your homeschooling lessons to brighten someone else’s day.

Is your child cooking a dessert from another country? 

Is your child practicing writing notes to people?

How about painting a picture in art class? 

Any of these ideas are great to share with others that are around you. If you’re child knows in advance that this project is going to be shared with someone else, most times your child will work harder to make it even better. 

Teaching your child to think of others, gets them in the practice to be kind, caring adults too. It almost becomes a habit to do their best and make someone happy at the same time. Win Win!

Homeschooling Tip #2: Notebooking

Notebooking is a creative way for kids to record the information that they are learning. 

It’s extremely easy to get started notebooking, and your kids can do it for any subject or topic. 

Notebooking Supplies

Not all of these items are mandatory. Each notebooking page can be as different as the person that is creating it. But here are some supplies that we have used with our notebooks.

Notebooking Subjects

There is such a wide variety of subjects/topics that can be studied with notebooking. Here are just a few ideas.

How to do a Notebook Page

There is no right or wrong way to make a notebooking page. 

Usually, there is some sort of visual on the page; a drawing, printed clip art or picture, or a picture from your curriculum. There could be maps, timelines or even bullet point lists.

Your child can cut this visual out with scissors and glue it anywhere on the page.

Next, your child can write about whatever visual is on the page. 

If it’s a person, then you may want to include the person’s name, date of birth/death, major impact or events that occured in that person’s life, or how that person contributed to society.

If it’s a map, you could always label country or city names, use arrows to show starting and ending destinations, measure distances, include the country’s population, religion, climate and culture.

When the page is complete you can have your child sign and date the back of the page. This is good for in the future when you can’t remember who did the page. 

The Notebooking System

Once your child has a page completed, they can place it in a page protector, and then into a three ring binder.

I like to use the binders in case you ever want to rearrange pages. 

Your child can decorate the cover of the binder or even make a cool label for the binder’s spine. 

A notebook should have a theme. 

For an example of how I would help my kids, let’s say I am going to do a notebook on Louis Zamperini. (I did a review of this book from YWAM publishing recently, so I’ll use him)

When you open the notebook, page 1 would be Zamperini’s picture and underneath of that would be his name, date of birth and date of his death.

Turn the page over and you could easily do a two-page spread with the back of this page and the front of another.

This two-page spread would give us enough room to include a world map. On the map,  we would place a colorful star sticker on the major countries/cities in his life. Then we would label the stars.

Turning the page over, gives us another two-page spread. Maybe this time we would want to do a timeline of his life. 

This timeline could have the dates and the major events labeled. Event pictures could be drawn or obtained and then placed around each event that is labeled. 

On the following pages, we could do more in-depth studying of the major events of Zamperini’s life.

So, one page could be the research and summary of the Olympics. Another page could be WWII, WWII airplanes, survival skills, concentration camps, salvation, and finally Bible verses on forgiveness.

An ending page might be the child writing his/her opinion about the book and if they would recommend it to anyone else to read.  Even a picture with them holding the book could be placed on this last page.

Depending on how creative and inspired your child is with notebooking, they could make their notebooks into colorful scrapbook style books by placing their map (or any visual) on top of colored paper, cutting the colored paper and then gluing it down. They could cut decorative page corners to decorate the page, as well as any other type of colorful border. 

Different fonts could be used, either typed up and printed out with a computer, or maybe some Calligraphy done by hand. 

The possiblities are endless…. and fun!

Notebooking Classes with SchoolhouseTeachers.com

The classes listed in this section, as well as the ones to follow, are all part of SchoolhouseTeachers.com. 

To read my review, just click on SchoolhouseTeachers.com.

I do partner with SchoolhouseTeachers.com to endorse their products, but I would never recommend anything to you that I haven’t checked out and looked into thoroughly for myself. 

Click on any class title to read more information about the class.

Homeschooling Tip #3: Nature

Kids love to learn about nature. It is amazing. I enjoy learning about seeds, insects and animals right along with them. 

When my daughter was about 4 years old, she loved bugs. She would turn over rocks in the flower beds looking for slugs. They are disgusting looking things, but anyway she loved them. 

Now that she is older, she doesn’t particularly care for them. 

Homeschooling Tip #4: Nutrition

Who doesn’t need a little help with nutrition? 

Homeschooling Tip #5: Ninth Graders

1. Geometry
2. Exploring Literature
3. Writing on this Day in History
4. Schoolhouse Spelling – Charlotte Mason Middle School, Spelling List Three
5. Earth Science
6. Geology Unit 1
7. Age of Revolution
8. Understanding Ancient History
9. Studio Art for Teens
10. Achieving Art Success with ArtAchieve
11. Art: The Timeless Treasure
12. Digital Art and Product Designs for Small Business

Did you miss looking at last week’s “M” posts from other really good homeschool bloggers? 

If you missed any, just click on the colored post titles below. 

Lego ABC’s: M is for Mindstorms from Desiree at Our Homeschool Notebook 
Math Resources for Home Education from Chareen at Every Bed of Roses
Discovering the “M” Rabbits of the World from Annette at At Home Pets
Making Facebook Easier from Annette at A Net in Time
Rabbit Manure: A Scoop on Poop from Annette at At Home Pets
Making an Adult from Annette at A Net in Time
M is for Math Games from Desiree at Our Homeschool Notebook
M is for Music from Kristen at A Mom’s Quest to Teach
Monticello of the Past from Kristen at A Mom’s Quest to Teach
Modest mussorgsky: Composer ABC’s by Lori at At Home: Where Life Happens
Middle School Thoughts on Monday from Megan at My Full Heart
M is for Mandie from Dawn at The Schoolin’ Swag
M is for Magruder from Kristen at A Mom’s Quest to Teach

If you would like to read more Homeschooling Tips from A to Z, just click on the alphabet letter below.