SS #34: Bling Your Pre-Reading with a Notebook Makeover (with Celeste Cruz)
Our guest today is Celeste Cruz. Celeste is the Catholic homeschooling mother of nine children ages 11 and under, blogger at Joyous Lessons, and one of the hostesses of CharlotteMasonIRL on Instagram. In this episode, Pam, Brandy, and Celeste have an in-depth conversation about transforming the chore of pre-reading for our children’s lessons into a beautiful scholé experience for Mom. They cover the technical aspects of notebooking, letting go of perfectionism, and MORE!
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Listen to the podcast:
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Show Notes:
- Scholé Every Day
- Pam:
The Read Aloud Family by Sarah Mackenzie
The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease (also mentioned)
- Celeste:
The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (also mentioned)
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (also mentioned)
- Brandy:
Bandersnatch by Diana Glyer
- Pam:
- Topical Discussion: Bling Your Pre-Reading with a Notebook Makeover
- SS #25: To Pre-Read or Not to Pre-Read (Why Is It Even a Question?)
- Celeste’s reading journal
School Education by Charlotte Mason (aka Volume 3)
- AmblesideOnline
Flexbook Sketchbook
- SS #32: Paideia Is All Greek to Me (episode where Brandy talks about her paideia notebook)
Augustus Caesar’s World by Genevieve Foster
- John Muir Laws videos
- MBTI
Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks
precut watercolor paper
Frixion erasable gel pens
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What an inspiring episode. My question is for Celeste. I was wondering if you keep notes for assignment ideas for your students separately, or do you jot them down somewhere in the journal. Do you keep names of people and places for reference, or notes on how break up the readings? I am thinking of pre-reading way ahead because I have three students, and I think I would forget those things by simply “keeping” my own journal.
LOVE LOVE LOVE this episode! Actually, most episodes, but yeah… Thank you, ladies!
Yes, I do keep notes like that as well. I keep those separately, on the back of my Weekly Meeting planning sheet. Those notes include proper nouns (place to look up, people to mention, events covered) as well as discussion starters or connections I make among readings that we might want to talk about together. I bring that sheet to our Weekly Meeting to go through with my kids, and then at the end of each term, I file those so I can grab them the next time I’m doing that year.
I have some close-ups of what those notes look like and some details about my process in this post from last year:
http://joyouslessons.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-weekly-planning-pre-reading-session.html
Hope that helps, Patty! 🙂
I have fallen off the pre-reading horse because it has felt like SUCH a chore to me, even though I love to read. I feel disconnected from my year 3 student and have wanted to start pre-reading again. Thanks so much for this episode! Still hard to wrap my head around finding time to do this and still my own Charlotte Mason Study group and my own reading and exercise and walking(which I love), and taking care of the animals on our farm and the 5 kids but I know enough that I just need to start small to build the habit and let it grow from there instead of just not doing it! Thanks ladies, for sharing all your wisdom. I LOVE this podcast and your myriad ideas! Also, I’m coming to the Great Homeschool Convention in Ohio and I have personal questions for you, Brandy;) I feel like a total fan girl and whenever I talk about going to the convention, my husband (the GEM who is watching the kids so I can go), smirks and says, “Don’t embarrass yourself!!!!)
Haha! I will try not to embarrass myself, too. 😉
I haven’t even finished the episode yet, but it was soul food listening to this as I was folding laundry yesterday! 🙂 As a former art student and art teacher, it made me so happy to hear such smart, thoughtful, well-read women having an extended conversation about art media and the usefulness of copying in developing an artistic sense. Yes, all of this is part of the education of well-rounded persons — including us mamas! I’m so excited to start pre-reading for year 1 with these ideas, and to have a specific reason for regular art making, however small. (It occurs to me that I have the opportunity to create a reading journal for each AO year, since my oldest will start the first year in the fall! Ha, but let’s not get ahead of myself. 🙂 )
I love my anolog brain notebook and have been working through a couple different versions of it. It started as more of a bullet journal except I didn’t want to ever see the To Do pages again. My commonplacing got lost in the mist of lists.
My problem is I REALLY want to keep one notebook, but how to do that and keep subjects clustered (drawings, lists, quotes, books recommended etc). My ISTJ ness is having trouble.
The last book I split it up into thirds at the get go- lists, commonplace, and drawing. I had a brain wave while listening to one of your podcasts; now the To Dos are on large sticky notes. When it gets full I pull it off and start a new one. So the thirds thing worked alright. I just feel there’s a better way out there.
But how to make one notebook work for the every day (not pre-reading)? or do I need to just move on and buy several.? I think i’d end up using them less if I have to find the right book before I write.
For one of my many projects, I use a travelers notebook like this one. I wonder if that would solve your problem? I totally get it!
Ohh that’s such a beautiful book. I want them all!
I’m wondering which historical atlas you got for your children, Celeste. I make maps ahead of time and look it all up on the internet. I’d really love an atlas in book form which could help with most of the work. Thank-you so much!
When I looked at the link this afternoon I thought, “Oh what a beautiful book.” Then when I had more time this evening I realized it’s 3 notebooks in 1!!! Brilliant. hooray, all my (notebook) wishes have come true. : -)
Woohoo! I feel like a matchmaker. 😉 ♥
Hi Lynette! I actually got a couple of historical atlases, but the one we have been using most is Fox’s Atlas of European History: https://amzn.to/2Ju7kjs It’s a slim, easy-to-navigate volume with simple color maps that are easy to read, and since our studies are mostly in Europe this year, it has been just what we have needed. 🙂
My question’s unrelated to prereading: What do your kids use for mapwork? For example, does the child reading Our Island Story have a map of England he’s supposed to fill in? I usually try to have a map of the area about which we’re reading, but we don’t get more interactive than finding places.