The Discipline (and Joy) of Notebooking

by Rebecca Berg Manor

Back in 1984, when Beautiful Feet Books was just starting out, there were very limited resources available for home educators, so we had to start from scratch. One tool that we always found to be a reliable standby was the humble composition notebook. It served students as a creative outlet, journal, portfolio, and much more. In the past 32 (!) years we've never strayed from recommending that students keep notebooks as they progress through our studies so when I came across this quote on Instagram, I had to share it.

"No other learning tool has more purity of approach than a blank notebook. Like the artist's canvas, it has the creative potential of becoming anything the author wishes to portray. It's natural form makes it adaptable to any task or learning situation. The content, rather than being dictated by a pre-set curriculum, is determined by the family, meeting their unique and individual needs. When the development of learning tools becomes the focus rather than merely gaining content, then the family is free to use all of life as their curriculum." Marilyn Howshall

Thank you so much kinderfarm homeschool for sharing that quote. It perfectly sums up what we have believed all along. Now that we live in a more fast-paced time and our students are drawn more and more to "interactive" media, the discipline of keeping a notebook can seem rather old-fashioned and maybe even pointless. We do hear from parents whose children find the notebooking activities suggested in our guides to be less than thrilling, and we understand the tension between teaching the disciplines of education and the desire to make learning fun in every way. Here's some tips for combining the two.

First, just as Howshall so eloquently states, notebooks are tools. We never offered worksheets for our

notebooks because we believe in the freedom and promise of a blank sheet of paper. Our guides all contain writing prompts to help you begin and carry on the notebooking process but it's important to push aside the workbook/worksheet mentality while notebooking. This begins with the notebook itself. Choose one that your child likes. Many people use a sewn-bound notebook and only put their best work in it. This approach results in a great portfolio of the student's work. Others prefer a spiral notebook. This can be useful for removing pages if necessary. I love these notebooks pictured to the right. Moleskines, three-ring binders, they're all great! Use the format that works best for your child.

Secondly, we provide free print-outs for many of our study guides (available here) and these are great for adding color to student notebooks along with mapping activities to incorporate geography. When using these printouts, let your children's creativity go wild. If they prefer using water colors to colored pencils, or if they want to draw their own illustrations, these assignments are opportunities for your children to exercise creative license! It can be so tempting to want our children to create brag-worthy portfolios but these are their projects and should reflect their aesthetic.

Third, notebooks are for recording. After your student has had fun creating/drawing/painting/sketching, this is the time for labeling and recording. Study after study shows that writing things out by hand reinforces memory and information processing. So, while your student may not find this to be his favorite activity of the day, it is important. This activity incorporates handwriting, composition, and reasoning, so remind your students that their accomplishing a lot in these assignments. If your children are very young, feel free to label the pictures for them until they are proficient enough in writing to do it themselves. While it is important that written work be done, it's also good to make it as enjoyable as possible for children who find it challenging. "Short and simple" is the key for children who find this extra challenging. Some students will love writing in their notebooks, others will not. Do not worry too much about the students who don't find it enjoyable. As their appreciation for story and language grows through exposure to great literature, their abilities to write will expand.

Last, provide good materials. When a student is creating, it's very helpful to have colored pencils that blend and aren't so hard that they make everything look messy. It's wonderful to have watercolors that are saturated with color and good paper to use them on. It makes for a much more pleasant experience if your students have tools that facilitate creative expression, not hinder it.

For inspiration on notebooking, check out these blogs: Jodi Mockabee, kinderfarm homeschool, and our Instagram (where we're constantly posting pictures from homeschooling mommas!).

We hope your students enjoy the creative outlet provided by notebooking and grow in the critical reasoning and processing that the discipline fosters. And we LOVE seeing your children's notebook pages, so snap a picture and post it on our Facebook page or Instagram. And tag it with #backtoschoolwithBFB for a chance to win $100.00 to spend on our website.

Notebook photo credits: Reflections from Drywood Creek

Don't forget to enter our Back-to-School with BFB contest. Details here.

Shifting Teaching Paradigms

by Rebecca Berg Manor

It's back-to-school time and many of you may be using our study guides for the very first time. It can be a big change if you're used to at textbook or a more schedule oriented history curriculum, so we wanted to write a bit about how to make this approach work best for you family. Today, let's take a look at scheduling, study guides, and subjects.

At BFB, we want our study guides to be seen as guides, not checklists, do-to lists, or something that holds undue influence on how you teach your students. The guides exist for you to use in the way that works best for your family. When using literature to teach history, it does take more time than it would if you're using a textbook. Textbooks are designed with efficiency in mind, not story. In order to make a literature-based approach work for your family so that they can glean the riches of a literature approach to history, it can be helpful to simply set the amount of time you want to spend each day or week on history/literature/geography. Then, within the confines of that time, do what you can. Do not be distressed if you do not complete an entire lesson in the time you've set aside for history. The study guide is a tool, not a master. If you set up history to be for three hours a week, stick with that as you've already determined that this is what works best for your family. This gives you control of your curriculum, instead of the curriculum controlling you. Try not to feel like you must complete three lessons each week or read four books a month. Simply complete what you can in the amount of time you allot for the subject. If the study takes you longer than a year, that's one of the freedoms of homeschooling; you do not have to follow an artificially imposed schedule. This also give you the ability to take diversions when your student comes upon something they want to explore further. Additionally, it gives you and your chilfen time to enjoy the literature and really delve into the historical characters, ideas and consequences, movements and upheavals, that make history so interesting.

For many this approach can be intimidating or it can feel like you are not accomplishing enough, but it can also be very freeing. Your students are digging into history as more than just dates and events. They're learning that history is the stories of people; people like themselves who lived at times that can inform our own and give us wisdom in how we live. In this way coupling history and literature becomes more than just social studies, it becomes a study in ideas and character and when viewed from this lens, it's bigger than a lesson plan or a four-year cycle in which the entire history of the world is covered on repeat.

Additionally, our study guides encompass more than history. Your students are learning geography with every mapping activity. They're being exposed to great literature and language with each reading assignment. Their written work counts toward language arts. Notebook illustrations count as art. Discussion questions develop critical reasoning skills. Teaching in such an interdisciplinary style takes the pressure off of feeling that each subject must be covered in a separate lesson. The separation of disciplines is artificial. Rarely does life fall neatly into separate categories and neither should our studies.

Later this week we will be talking about notebooking and how to make it more engaging for those of you whose students find it boring or challenging! Please post your questions and comments here and we will try to address those in the next blog post.

Don't forget to enter our Back-to-School with BFB contest. Details here.

Don't forget to enter our giveaway!

Are your bookshelves organized, your lessons planned, your school room in ship-shape order? If you're like me, probably not! But for many of us, school starts anyway! Add one more thing to your to-do list and snap a pic that captures #backtoschoolwithBFB and post it on our Instagram and Facebook page to be entered to win a $100.00 gift certificate to use at Beautiful Feet Books! Be sure to tag the photo with #backtoschoolwithBFB to ensure your photo gets entered. We love seeing how you use Beautiful Feet Books and are excited for a new year full of wonderful literary exploration and discovery.

Contest is open until September 25, 2016 and the winner will be announced on September 30, 2016.
Complete Rules and Conditions here.

Starting school this week? Enter our contest!!!

Are your bookshelves organized, your lessons planned, your school room in ship-shape order? If you're like me, probably not! But for many of us, school starts anyway! Add one more thing to your to-do list and snap a pic that captures #backtoschoolwithBFB and post it on our Instagram and Facebook page to be entered to win a $100.00 gift certificate to use at Beautiful Feet Books! Be sure to tag the photo with #backtoschoolwithBFB to ensure your photo gets entered. We love seeing how you use Beautiful Feet Books and are excited for a new year full of wonderful literary exploration and discovery.

Contest is open until September 25, 2016 and the winner will be announced on September 30, 2016.
Complete Rules and Conditions here.

Back-to-School Photo Contest, $100.00 prize!

It's that time of year when boxes of books are landing on doorsteps all over the country and parents are putting together lesson plans, setting up classrooms, and squeezing in last-minute summer activities. In honor of this exciting time of year, we're sponsoring a fun photo contest on our Instagram and Facebook page. Snap a pic of your first day back at school with your BFB books and post it on either platform for a chance to win a $100.00 gift certificate to use at bfbooks.com. Extra points awarded for creativity! Make sure to tag it with #backtoschoolwithBFB to ensure it gets entered in the contest. We'll announce the winner on September 30, 2016. 

And if you're still trying to decide on your history curriculum, give us a call (800.889.1978). We love talking through our options with you. And check out all our studies here. 

We would love to hear what you think! Chime in below in the comment section and share your thoughts. Don't forget to 

check out our Facebook and Pinterest pages. To learn more about Beautiful Feet Books, click here. 

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Melissa introduces our Ancient History...

Melissa at Reflections from Drywood Creek is going to be using our A Literature Approach to Ancient History this year. She will be sharing her family's experience in regular blog posts and this is the first! 

It occurred to me that I keep mentioning the fact that we'll be using Beautiful Feet this year, but I really haven't shared the plan so here goes.  RileyAnn will be using Beautiful Feet Ancient History as her primary curricula for 7th grade.  She's really excited about the great books she'll be reading and I'm very pleased with the intermediate level book choices as well.  Here's the list of suggested resources and literature used in the guide, as well as a little bit about our plan for each suggested resource:

BF Ancient History guide - We will be using the first half or intermediate section of the guide, which was written for 5th - 8th grade.  The guide is intended to be completed in one traditional school year...continued here.  

We would love to hear what you think! Chime in below in the comment section and share your thoughts. Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Pinterest pages. To learn more about Beautiful Feet Books, click here. 

And if you've enjoyed this, please feel free to share using the buttons below.

Simplified Parenting

by Rebecca Berg Manor

I have recently been reading Parenting, Inc.: How the Billion-Dollar Baby Business Has Changed the Way We Raise Our Children by Pamela Paul and have found it to be both infuriating and reassuring. In exposing the pervasive influence marketers have had on parents, Paul shows us how we are constantly inundated with the message that as parents we are never enough. We aren't aware enough, we aren't safety conscience enough, we're not qualified enough, educated enough, expert enough to raise our children without the help of "experts" and this nifty product that is helpfully being offered at a price.

By tracing the development of the "mama market" and it's reliance on fear-mongering Paul shows that many contemporary parenting anxieties are really constructs that have been so pounded into parent's heads it can be difficult to sort through the noise and hone in on the truth.

As someone who was raised in the 1980s and became a parent in 2013, I know a bit about fear-based parenting. Widely publicized kidnappings during the 1980s made parents nervous and children's formerly unrestricted wanderings were suddenly curbed. Enter the hyper-competitive nature of the 1990s and suddenly kids were not only given no time to freely wander, their free moments were rapidly shrinking, filled with private tutors, Mandarin lessons, ballet, etc. Parents viewed an increasingly global economy as a place filled with opportunities open to only those children who were most prepared. Add in technological developments and the Internet and homes were no longer insulated from every bad-news story. Local news, national horror stories, expert opinions, educational experts, and a million other voices were streaming into our homes, most of them telling parents that we're inadequate. It may seem a bit melodramatic to call this a tragedy, but I do think it is one. In my own friends I've seen mother's riddled with anxieties due to poorly researched news stories. I've experienced the worry of wondering if my son is at risk for "dry drowning" - an extremely rare event that has been broadly trumpeted on morning news shows, Facebook, and email.

This age of information makes all content see useful, but that's not true. I've seen information-overload in person at countless homeschool conventions. Spending over a decade attending these conventions gave me a window into how overwhelming it can be to take on the responsibility of educating your children at home. As a mother myself, I can surely empathize and am so grateful for those voices of reason and experience that help me tune in to my instincts and reject the fear. Here's what I found useful.

1. Read Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie. It's the best book for home schooling parents, hands down.
2. Choose an educational style/curriculum that suites your personality. If you are someone who craves structure, find a style that provides guidance but does not turn you into a servant to a schedule or checklist. If you're more carefree, find an approach that provides structure without squelching your spirit.
3. Remember that you know your children best. Take time to enjoy your little ones, getting to know their idiosyncrasies so that when you start questioning your abilities in light of some new study or  trend, you can make the best choices for your family.
4. Choose joy. One of the greatest dangers of this information age is the ever present temptation to compare ourselves to other moms. When we can be inspired by other moms, that's wonderful. When

picture-perfect Instagram pictures start to make us feel inadequate and begin stealing our joy, it's time to step back and refocus on our own families.
5. Make your own education a priority. When we model curiosity to our children and show them that investing in our own development brings us joy, we're setting a good example.
6. Seek wisdom from your spouse. The moments when I feel most inadequate are when I want to shut down but my kind husband has shown me that those are moments when I need him to speak in to my life, to provide a better perspective.
7. Step back. It's so tempting to take on too much responsibility for our children, believing that if we just parent well enough, we can protect our kids. By trusting God with our children, we give ourselves the freedom to be even better parents; parents who engage with our children out of joy and not fear.
8. Have fun together. When the tyranny of school schedules becomes too much, take a day off and do something you all enjoy together. These breaks are so important. When my husband was writing his dissertation there were months where he would be trudging through research and would feel like he kept hitting the same wall. This was when I knew he needed a break. We'd take off on a mini-holiday and the time off always resulted in a breakthrough in his thinking. Breaks are not time wasted, they're essential to reordering perspective and making way for new thoughts and inspiration.

As we approach a new school year, I hope this is encouraging to you. Try to ignore the doomsday voices of our age, remembering that God chose you to parent your children and equipped you in just the right way.

See our video "Why BFB?"

Want to lean more about Beautiful Feet? In two minutes we explain how literature-rich history curriculum can inspire, educate, and build character. It's the power of good books!

We Would love to hear what you think! Chime in below in the comment section and share your thoughts. Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Pinterest pages. To learn more about Beautiful Feet Books, click here. 

And if you've enjoyed this, please feel free to share using the buttons below.

Be Inspired for an Incredible School Year

It's August and that means Rea is hosting her annual Back-to-School Literary Soirée! Read all about it below! 

Dear Readers,

I am excited to announce our Summer Literature Soirée for Saturday, August 20th from 9:30 am -3:30 pm.  This will be a full day of friendship, luxuriating in literature, and just plain fun!  We will discuss For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay as well as cover Renaissance history with a full session on Renaissance artists.  I’m excited about this as it’s going to give me the opportunity to really revisit some beloved artists and sculptors of this period. We will, of course, talk about the best children’s books for exploring this period and I don’t doubt you will all have some wonderful additions to add to the general richness!

Bernadette Speakes is a talented actor with broad experience on stage, film and television. She is also a wife and home schooling mother. Her readings will transport you!

Lunch is included of course, and I will be delighted to share some fresh goodness from my vegetable garden, and more than likely we will enjoy a
Salad Nicoise–the variations on that theme being many! Saturday, August 20, 2016And not to forget, the wonderful Bernadette Speakes and I will be coming up with some special reading to share for your listening pleasure!

1306 Mill Street

San Luis Obispo, CA

Cost: $35.00 (includes lunch)

Register here.

See our video "Why BFB?" Want to learn more about Beautiful Feet? In two minutes we explain how literature-rich history curriculum can inspire, educate, and build character. It's the power of books!

We would love to hear what you think! Chime in below in the comments section and share your thoughts. Don't 

forget to check out our Facebook and Pinterest pages.  To learn more about Beautiful Feet Books, click here.

And if you've enjoyed this, please feel free to share using the buttons below.