I believe that as a homeschooler, we should teach our children to take notes. As young as 2nd grade, we have been starting this habit at our house. When we are studying a lesson in Science, History or Social Studies, I require my children to write down important information on their notebooks. This allows them to remember what they are learning, process the information and practice their dictation and spelling skills as well.
When the children were in lower grade school levels, they used the simple lined notebook which can be bought from the bookstores. They would write and list down information as they hear it. I would indicate to them what information would be important – like the what, when, where how and why of whatever we were learning. As the years go by, they eventually learned what information to record.
There are some children who are highly artistic like my daughter, and she has began to take notes using diagrams instead of words and sentences in her upper grade levels. Here are some samples of her work:
While my son continues to take down notes using words and sentences. Sometimes, we also use special pages. We have used Notebooking Pages before and it was helpful too. You can also check out Mind Mapping.
Whatever format your child wants to use, I believe that it is an important skill they need to learn as we homeschool them.
