Continuing with our notebooking adventure… here is the second set of notebooking papers in the Lives of the Prophets series :) This is for the story of Prophet Idris `alayhis salaam. His story is a little short, but I’ve included different papers that you can use depending on how you want to write out the lessons.

Mars liked the font that I used in the Prophet Adam papers and wanted her notebook to have a uniform look. I like trying out different fonts. So there are two versions for you to download.

Here’s Set A, which you can download here or at Scribd.

And here’s Set B that you can download here or at Scribd.

I hope you find them useful!

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!

Mars and I have been easing into notebooking, particularly for Science. She doesn’t really enjoy writing because she finds it exhausting (you would understand why if you could see the amount of Arabic homework she has to do on a daily basis!) and also for reasons I have stated earlier. Still, she has agreed to give it her best shot and upon seeing the notebooking sheets I’ve prepared, seems really excited as well, alhamdulillah. It helps that Science is her favourite subject – there are numerous topics we can delve into, not to mention the multiple ways in which we can process, collate and present the information.

Notebooking is a useful tool for teaching students how to organise their material and thinking. In addition, they will be able improve their reading and writing skills. As a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, I ask Mars to narrate back or retell what they have learnt. In this way, I can be sure that we have covered all the bases and that she fully comprehends the lesson. Notebooking is also a form of narration – I like that it gets her to write and saves me the trouble of recording her narrations :P I have prepared her some sheets but I hope that in time, in shaa Allah, she will use her talents and creativity to personalise her notebooks.

Here’s an Astronomy Notebook I am sharing with you. Nothing fancy – I’ve kept it really basic so it’s easily adaptable. Pages have not been numbered so you can print and arrange them as you see fit. The notebook includes pages for:

• the cover
• references on the universe from the Qur’an and Sunnah
• individual planets and other celestial objects
• new words (word bank)
• a discussion on astrology and Islam’s position
• illustrations and descriptions

Download by clicking on the image below.

Imaan.Net's Astronomy Notebook

Feedback will be greatly appreciated :)