Language arts can seem such a mystery to teach. So many areas that are interconnected and yet so detached. I've always thought of Language Arts all in their little separate parts and packages - i.e. workbooks. For instance, a workbook for writing, one for spelling, another for English & Grammar skills and of course, there is Reading Comprehension and a myriad of other areas that any caring homeschool parent would be sure to seek out and present to their children. Just thinking of all those areas separately makes me tired and cranky.

Several years ago I stumbled unto an idea of teaching my children this subject and yet produce something worthwhile that they would really learn from. I didn't just want my children to fill in blanks or cruise through a pile of workbooks and consider myself 'having accomplished something'.

My son hated to write. I've always liked to write, so I really couldn't understand his resentment toward holding a pencil. As you can imagine, workbooks - the fill-in-the-blank or finish the sentence etc, were completed in anguish, if at all. I tried to remember when he did like to write. I remembered when he was just six years old. Robbie and I were reading all the books we could find in the library on the topic of the early settlers and first pilgrims. This is before Charlotte Mason and her concepts were widely read. I had never heard of her. I had no idea - I was reading to this child LIVING books - stories that filled his mind with important little details and lit a small candle in his soul with a love of history that burns brighter each day.

At the time of our Early American History study, I came across a book by Valerie Bendt entitled "Creating Books With Children". I loved the concept. Immediately we started
implementing the ideas in this book and Robbie started drawing and coloring pictures to illustrate what he was writing or narrating to me about. He had listened so intently to so many wonderful Pilgrim stories that he began to write (well, actually he narrated back to me and I typed, what he wanted to say - though he did write quite a bit himself). What he produced was his own beautiful rendition of the Story beginning in England and ending with the Thanksgiving feast the Indians shared. We carefully followed all of the book's instructions and bound the book together. Yes, it looked like a real book. Today this book is a family treasure.

Since then Robbie and his younger brother have completed other books and journals. For Robbie writing has to have meaning and purpose. It has to relate to him in some way. He just can't fill in a blank aimlessly.

As the Lord has opened my eyes to see the truth that children really want to have something meaningful, to produce products that merit the attention of others - I started to see a truth that we adults seem to overlook. Children are people. They have the desire to want to be adults someday. Little boys want real tools, little girls want to make real cookies and bread (or sometimes vice versa) , and all children want to produce things that won't get relegated to the trash or be marked up with huge smiley faces and mounted on the refrigerated before being recycled on garbage day.

I watched as my son would feverishly write pages of long lists of birds or other animals he had seen or stamps in his collection but when it came to those trusty workbooks - stand back - that child couldn't write if I made him sit there all day. Soooo, developed a plan that has brought much relief to me.

Basically the plan starts with deciding what my child has an interest in the most - for my oldest this was a breeze as I had only to choose among some 2 or 3 dozen items of interest. After deciding an interest that becomes his thesis work. Thesis? Yes. I allow him to study a subject that thoroughly interests him (this system may be considered unit study style). Right now there are a few areas of interest - they are birds, nature, history themes, Bible studies, gardening and maybe a couple others. I am now helping him to take his interest and put them into books (notebooks, journals, scrapbooks etc).

This same idea can be used with anything. You can make notebooks to go along with your history study for the year, the science study etc. We keep refining the idea and learning to broaden and simplify this concept as we grow and learn and change.

Once you have found the subject matter/topics of study for about 2 to 6 months–depending on age, decide which forms of writing you will concentrate on.

It's important at this point to realize that we are working with children and we must allow them to work at their pace and skill level. Some children delve into this type of activity with the utmost enthusiasm and others drag their feet a bit to see if this is just another one of those "time wasters". Some children will write volumes, some a sentence. Don't worry about that so much. If you must worry about something. Be more concerned with seeing a measure of delight in your child's educational process.

So let's get started. Here are some ideas in putting your notebooks, journals or scrapbooks together:
1. Journals - these can be the composition books that are sturdy and sewn together or the ruled bound blank books found in stationary stores or you can purchase the thick spiral bound blank Sketch Diaries that are 11x8 1/2 (distributed by Mead and other companies) found in stationary & larger department stores. These journals can be used to write in (neatly) and also can be places to paste in pictures, maps, drawings etc to go along with their written pieces. We used this idea for over a year with History and Science. Those journals are still being added to and they are now a nice collection of their narrations to me or their written copywork of narrations from books we've read, maps & pictures they've drawn, magazine pictures, postcards, pressed flowers etc. You don't have to fill a book for it be a successfully completed project - the idea isn't quantity but quality of learning.
2. Notebooks and Scrapbooks - notebooks differ from journals only in that that these
are usually the three ring binders that you can add pages to. We've used these with excellent success with both notebook making and scrapbooks. With 3 ring binders you have the ability to change page places. Which can be a blessing, if you want to keep certain things together. This can be wonderful for Bible studies - as the child may have a preferred system of paging the studies.

An example: Recently we took a trip to the Maine Coast. We collected Sea Urchins, sand dollars, lobster parts, sea weed, sea glass, starfish etc. We also stopped at different shops and bought several postcards. We visited lighthouses and other neat places. We took rolls of film and kept all the maps and information booklets we found at the Chamber of Commerce. When we returned home we started scrapbooking in a notebook about our trip.

Because I was going to use photographs in the children's notebooks I wanted to use archival quality materials (basically, this just means pages and protectors that would not ruin the photos over time - most photo album pages are made with chemicals that deteriorate photos). I found these relatively inexpensive at the craft store in our area (Joann Fabrics for us) when they were 25% off on sale. I bought several packages of archival-safe paper (enough for any project for a number of months). I wanted a variety (from brights to pale, textured and thin, borders and plain, printed pages with nature scenes and other pretty ideas). I also bought die cuts (which are colored heavy stock paper cutout outlines of anything from cars, tents, animals to birds, planes and luggage - there is much to choose from in dressing up scrapbook pages). I also purchased archival-quality double stick tape, photo splits (which are little pieces of double stick tape), corners for mounting pictures, archival- quality glue sticks and stickers of sea creatures. I also purchased archival-safe, see through page protectors. At Walmart I found vinyl 3- ring notebooks for $1 or $2 each.

When we arrived home, I took pictures of their collections of sea creatures on the remaining roll of film. Once the film was processed (we got double prints so each child would have pictures) the boys started journaling our trip on regular notebook paper. Daily they worked on chronicling our trip. Somedays we made good time and enthusiastically wrote many entries and on other days we only seemed to accomplish a sentence or two. We took these journal accounts and cut and pasted them onto the nice colored paper we bought at the craft store. Then the children added pictures to these written accounts and dressed up the pages with stickers and postcards, adding the maps and the brochure of the motel where we stayed during our trip. Each one of the finished pages was slipped into its safe, see-through page protector. Once the notebook pages were completed, we took the remaining postcards and a few pictures of moose and other items relative to Maine and arranged these on the notebook cover and laminated it with clear Contact paper. The journals of this trip are their special joy to show to friends and family when they visit. They really turned out nice. It seems each project, each entry, each piece of copywork gets better. But then maybe I am bias.

This is an educational product that will be a keeper for generations. Notebooks don't have to always be fancy, though. They can be just filled with notebook paper of written copywork, dictation and narration. A notebook might be one child's place to put his artwork in page protectors.It could also be the keeper of a nature collection in forms of pressed flowers, pictures, feathers and other data. For another child it might be their purposeful and practical written account of a year of gardening adventures complete with expenditures and profits from extra plants and produce sold. Journals and notebooks free us to work with the natural bents and interests of our children. However it will take time to implement and make this a comfortable part of your routine. –time well spent, though. The final products will not be measured in completed fill -in -the -blank type workbooks - instead you will have to be patient to let it grow with your child. It may take several weeks or even months to complete a project. My younger child could write volumes more than his older sibling. But I know the challenge that writing poses to my oldest and I don't look for volumes from him - I look for understanding and quality and I have seen him become adept at producing more in terms of writing than I would have naturally expected.

This system has freed me so much and has been a painless way for them to learn grammar skills, spelling, sentence structure, vocabulary and creative writing. Our notebook system along with a simple grammar program (10 to15 min a day) is all that we have needed for now. To this we've added generous helpings of family time spent playing games like scrabble, boggle, Bible scramble and others.

For more information on putting into practice these ideasI recommend a few resources: Language Arts the Easy Way by Cindy Rushton is large resource on not just creating notebooks/journals but also implementing dictation, copywork, and teaching our children to write. Creating Books with Children by Valerie Bendt will take the same ideas above and help you bind them in a "book" with dustjacket. These are quite impressive. After creating a few books using her method we've been able to use additional ideas gleaned elsewhere and create a pop-up book on Geology.

copyright 1999 by Joan LaCelle

The above article originally appeared in the LaCelle Family Ministries Homeschool e-newsltr. She also wrote the Swift Arrow Unit Study previously published in the HEFT. LaCelle Family Ministries serves homeschool families and provides quality educational materials. For more information and to subscribe to their e-mail newsletter, please write lacelle@earthlink.net LaCelle Family Ministries
9199 Howd Road
Camden, NY 13316
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~lacelle/home.htm