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.

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.

Publishing History

Following up from the article on the d'Aulaires, I thought we could share a bit more about our publishing history. As you know, Leif the Lucky was our first publishing "baby." Once we dipped our toes in the world of children's publishing, we found that we loved it and as more and more of the books we relied on for our study guides fell out-of-print, we began meeting with authors, their children and heirs, in order to seek permission to bring their works back in to print. It has been quite the adventure! We now publish books that are used in dozens of different curricula, are carried in museum shops around the country, and are beloved members of many of your home libraries. It's been such an honor to play a part in preserving this literary and historical heritage for the next generation. Here are the books we currently publish. They can all be viewed here.

                              

                           

                   

                        

                     

            
                        

                   

                           

 

                       

                               

 

                                    

                              

Which of these titles have you read? Any favorites? Let us know. And if you have suggestions for favorite historical titles that are no longer available, contact us. We're always looking for "new" books to add to our collection.

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!

Preserving the d'Aulaire Legacy

Illustration from Abraham Lincoln

As many of you know, Leif the Lucky by Ingri and Edgar d'Aulaire was the first book we published here at BFB. It was a huge leap of faith and felt very risky at the time but Russ and Rea's commitment to preserving a literary legacy helped them push through and our little publishing company now publishes dozens of great books from a bygone era of children's literature. The d'Aulaires have always held a special place in our hearts and we were thrilled to learn that the folks at Atlas Obscura were curious about the husband and wife team. Check out this article to learn more about how we publish these books, how the d'Aulaire's conducted research, and how we're creating a new edition of Abraham Lincoln that fully restores the d'Aulaire's artwork to its original glory while updating some of the pictures. It's been a rewarding and challenging process and Rea has put her heart into it. You can read the article here. Just note that some of the other articles on the website are of a more mature nature.
If you would like to read more about the d'Aulaires, check out this entry.

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!

From the Archives: Jerram Barrs on Raising Educated People

Today I want to share with you an article by a professor at Covenant Seminary in Saint Louis, MO. I was once able to sit in on several classes taught by Jerram Barrs while my husband was studying at Covenant over nine years ago. I was struck by Mr. Barrs' humility and kindness and engaged sense of wonder. His article, "Raising Educated People" speaks to the challenges faced by parents who are having to battle against the onslaught of television, postmodernism, and consumerism to engage with their children. We've talked quite a bit about these issues in the past but I wanted to share the wisdom of a man who has raised three sons and is now looking back on those memories. The article is excellent and I highly recommend reading it. You can access it here.

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!

From the Archives: 5 Ways to Empower your Reluctant Reader

5 Ways to Empower your Reluctant Reader

 The entries on this blog have focused on the importance of reading in education. Exposure to literature and the ideas contained therein is essential to the formation of a well-rounded individual. All of that is wonderful, but what if you have students who either dislike reading or have difficulty with it. ADHD, dyslexia, some forms of autism, and many other learning challenges can make reading a struggle. Others are simply not interested. What do you do in such cases? There are several practical ways to encourage and develop a love of reading.  

~Lead by Example~

Research backs up what any parent knows: children learn by example. Read in front of your children. Talk with others about the books you are reading. Parents who read for their own pleasure and communicate that experience by talking about the books they're reading are more likely to pique their children's interest.

~Build a Family Library~

Make books easily accessible. Begin building a family library. This will reinforce the value you place on reading. Make regular trips to the library so that there are new books in your home for your children to discover. Research shows that simply having books in the home predicts academic success.

~Prioritize Reading~

Make time for reading. Turning off the TV is one of the most important steps one can take in opening up space for reading. Limit time on the computer and playing video games. This may lead to boredom, not such a bad thing, and lead children to discovery reading for their own pleasure.

~Read Together~

Read aloud as a family. This is essential. While many children think of reading as "boring" everyone 

loves a good story. Read aloud some of your childhood favorites. Once children are introduced to the joys of hearing good stories, it is often not long until they are wanting to discover good books for themselves. Reading aloud is also essential for developing good writing skills, even more so than reading silently to oneself!

~Follow Their Lead~

Follow your children's interests. If your son dislikes reading but loves horses, read Marguerite Henry's lovely stories with him. Encourage your child's overactive imagination by introducing her to the wonderfully fantastical worlds of C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Francis Hodgson Burnett, and Madeleine L'Engle. Show your children that books are one of the best ways to explore their interests.

Investigate the link between musical education and reading ability.

These are just a few practical suggestions and many people have found success in implementing some or all of these changes. If your child is still struggling, remember that all children develop at different speeds. We know children who took to reading immediately and for others it was slow process that took years. It may also be worth having your child tested for a learning disability. There are many tools and resources now available to help children with these challenges. Families have found help in therapeutic methods, teaching tools, even dietary changes! For a child who struggles with things that come easily to his friends or siblings, diagnosis can be a relief if it is presented in a supportive and encouraging manner.

I would love to hear from parents of reluctant readers! What have you done to encourage reading? How have you been successful? What challenges did you face?

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!

BFB Essentials: What is Classical anyway and who was Charlotte Mason?

This is Part III in our BFB Essentials Series. 

Click on the links to read Part I and Part II. 

“Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past.  Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.  A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.” –C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

What is Classical?

The term "classical" is one that has been bandied about the homeschooling movement for years and we are often asked if our curriculum is "classical". Answering this seemingly simple question has proven difficult as we find that there are as many definitions of the term "classical education" as there are curricula. People can purchase curriculum to teach "classical handwriting" and "classical science." This poses a challenge as it seems that everyone has their own conception of what it means to adopt a "classical" education approach.

The Modern Classical Movement

Classical education, in its modern use of the term, refers simply to an educational approach built around the trivium, or three-part process that aims to train the mind. The three parts refer to three stages: the grammar stage, the logic stage, and the rhetoric stage. Each of the three stages corresponds to four years, so during grades 1-4 the student is in the grammar stage and studying the basics, laying a foundation for the next stage. This approach to the four year cycle is relatively new, a product of educational bureaucracy at the turn of the 20th century when it was determined that public schools would be required to provide twelve years of education. While the idea of "classical" education has existed from the early Medieval period, its proponents argue that it is rooted in ancient philosophy, employing the methods used by Socrates and Plato. The modern classical movement also takes much from the "Great Books" movement, advocating that students and parents take part in the "Great Conversation" that has existed between the premier thinkers of all time. This is accomplished through exposure to the best literary works of the West.

Teaching History "Classically"

As we at BFB are primarily concerned with teaching history, let's take a look at how the trivium impacts the teaching of history. First, a classical approach advocates that all of world history be taught in four years. So from grades 1-4, a student is presented with a chronological world history. This four year pattern is repeated three times before the student graduates from high school. Obviously, this means that the history of the ancient world including Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, China, and more is presented in 1st grade. The Medieval period is generally taught in grade 2, the age of exploration and discovery in grade 3, and modern/contemporary history in grade 4. The cycle then begins at the beginning with the ancient world being taught again in grade 5, and so on and so forth. During the grammar stage memorization is emphasized. This is where classical education advocates argue that a student is most readily able to absorb facts. During these years students are often taught chants in which they memorize historically relevant trivia such as the names of the US presidents or the dates of key events. It is not until the later years that students are exposed to the great literary works of Western culture.

Charlotte Mason and Classical Education

Now that the trivium and "classical" education has been very basically defined, let's take a look at another educational approach that has been hugely influential in our own educational journey. Charlotte Mason, a British educator who lived during the late 1800s believed education was an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. Boiling Mason's pedagogy to its very basic elements reveals an educational approach designed to create a pleasant environment that would encourage the development of life-long learners, and cultivate curiosity and discovery. This required wide exposure to literature, conversation, exploration, and the arts. 

Charlotte Mason fervently advocated the use of "living books" to teach history, eschewing the dry textbooks that were being promoted at the time. These living books relayed information in a story form, allowing children to begin seeing history in terms of a human story and not simply a collection of facts. 

Hopefully we have helped clear up some of the confusion surrounding the terms "classical" and "Charlotte Mason". In our next entry we will answer the question we are most often asked, "Is BFB classical?"

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!