I am in awe of the power of notebooking. It is my absolute favorite thing.
I recently spent several weekends going back through about a decade’s worth of my journals (not diaries—journals), labeling them and ordering them chronologically. (Only to, the next weekend, get an idea to rearrange my furniture and have to take them all back down to move things… and re-sort them. But at least they were labeled this time!)
Notebooks are this incredible capsule at the end of a course, a year, a project—something that holds the evidence of your research, questions, insights, realizations, and doodles along the way. They show the books you read, the trips you went on, the ideas you had, the drawings you at least attempted.
When you flip back through your journal, you should feel like you're stepping back in time—reliving some of your best aha! moments all over again.
We notebook every day in almost every class.
Each student also keeps a separate Genius Journal. It’s not tied to any one subject - it lives alongside everything else.
We use it during our daily Genius Studio for drawings, timelines, quotes, notes, lab data, brainstorms, poems, comic designs, and more. Students bring it to guest workshops, meetings, and field trips. Older students use it to plan their weeks, track progress, and reflect as they complete assignments and projects.
And just as importantly, it’s a space for their own ideas - business plans, fashion designs, story concepts, random sparks they don’t want to lose.
In a notebook like this, a science sketch might sit next to a poem, which sits next to a map.
This approach comes from the Charlotte Mason homeschool tradition, where the notebook is one of the most important tools a student has.
A good notebook is worth its weight in gold.
Charlotte Mason didn’t see notebooks as worksheets or busywork. The act of writing and drawing is the learning. When students narrate, sketch, map, or diagram, they’re processing and making meaning—not just copying information down.
That’s also why these notebooks aren’t teacher-directed. Students decide what stood out, what to capture, and how to represent it. No two notebooks look the same. They feel personal, not performative.
Here are some notebooking pages that our students have created:
We were practicing drawing from observation using oil pastel. I love how vibrant the colors are—and how you can see the earlier test drawings on the side.
We were practicing drawing 3D forms, and I got to sit one-on-one with a student, drawing back and forth to improve their technique. You can see where some lines are darker—where I drew over them to give feedback on placement.
While studying DNA, students created careful scientific drawings using a YouTube video as a guide.
We measured our baby chicks as they grew each week. Then students created these bar graphs to compare chicken data from week to week.
Here are some inspiration notebooking pages that I found online (some of which we've tried, with notes):
We did a notebooking page like this before we visited a Japanese grocery store. We followed a Youtube video to draw the map (roughly) and then used a wall map to label a few key cities and landmarks.
These were really fun to do in the fall as the leaves were falling. Using clear packing tape is a MUST to preserve the leaves in your journal.
Hoping to do something similar to this one as we discuss Artermis II. I love filling an entire page!
I also like to add in creative nods to the junk journaling community, in how we encourage students to assemble and expand their journals.
Junk journaling is sort of like scrapbooking
but without attending to every little detail.
You can capture your day or your trip etc in your journal without having to spend so much time organizing - just slap in the receipts and the stickers from the event and write a few notes - and you're good to go. Memories saved!
This one was such a good idea and has been so fun! Creating collection pages in your journal is the best. You get to go back and add to them bit by bit over time and watch them grow.
Your notebook is a living book and you are the author.
After field trips, if they have lots of handouts, we'll make a page to capture the trip plus a few notes on what we learned:
Over time, the notebook becomes more than a tool.
It becomes a record of a mind at work.