I am rather enjoying making our own notebooking papers. There are several sites offering such papers for sale, but I’ve found several advantages to making my own. It is more affordable and I’ve also been able to customise them to my children’s tastes and writing.

There are several programmes that you can use like Free Serif Software, Scribus and Microsoft Publisher, but I just use good ol’ Microsoft Word. (I’ve got a plugin that converts my documents to PDF.) My lines are essentially tables – I play around with the row heights, borders styles and colours – and I add in clipart as and when necessary. Nothing fancy-schmancy :)

Below is an example of a basic notebooking template – I’ve included a cover, pages of primary-lined sheets for penmanship as well as regular-lined sheets for regular notebooking. The slideshow below from Scribd is in pdf format but you can download the MS Word format here to adapt to your own needs. You can change the title on the cover as well as the footer, type in your assignments as well as customise the number and size of lines and fonts (I LOVE fonts!).

Enjoy!

The kids are more keen about writing and researching these days, so I’ve been trying to churn out more noteboooking pages. I hope that this time, I will be more consistent about monitoring their penmanship.

Here are a few more pages for recording quick facts about the Prophets of Allah (`alayhimus salaam), and the Companions of Rasulullah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam (radhiallahu `anhum). I hope you find them useful :)

You can download the pages at Scribd or here.

In shaa Allah I will upload a few templates in MS Word for those of you would like to give making your own notebooking papers a shot.

We’ve recently received the good news that since we don’t live in Singapore anymore, Mars does NOT have to sit for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) in 2013 when she turns 12. We still have to submit annual reports to the Ministry of Education and if we do return to take up residence in Singapore before she turns 15, she will have to sit for the said examination. I’m relieved – not because I am afraid of the PSLE, but because I feel that I now have even more freedom to devote more time to other topics and subjects. I had, prior to this, been concerned about our learning days being devoted to merely preparing for the PSLE. Education in Singapore has changed a lot since I was a child. I don’t like what it has become … it is a blessing that I can now in shaa Allah spend even more time on Islamic studies, Arabic and being true to my Charlotte Mason aspirations. I feel like we can once again breathe life into our learning days alhamdulillah.

The girls and I have discussed our goals at length and we’ve decided to strive for the following:

• Diligence and fortitude without supervision, seeking reward only from Allah.
• Obedience with cheer and grace and truthfulness
• Complete attention during readings.
• Narrate clearly by dictating or writing after one listening without prompts or clues.
• Perfection is Allah’s domain, but we will strive to develop the habit of striving for excellence in execution.
• Handwriting should be neat, spelling must be correct and words must be enunciated clearly and properly.
• Memorise and understand the Qur’an. Learn stories of all the prophets, companions and scholars. Apply all these lessons to our daily life.
• Learn and recite ahadeeth and athar.
• Develop the habit of reading the Qur’an and keeping our tongues moist with the remembrance of Allah.
• Learn and recite famous speeches, poems and exerpts from great literature.
• Read whole chapter, great living books.

• Journal scientific studies and develop a thorough knowledge of the various branches.
• Keep a detailed notebook of their study of History and Geography.
• Learn meaningful and crafts and skills, including home making.
• Keep a commonplace book.