College Planning: A Note on Notes for Home Schoolers
By Mimi Rothschild
When you settle in to watch a software demonstration of a science concept or read the accompanying manual for an educational video, it is very important to take notes whether or not it is for home school purposes. That is, if you want to actually learn the information! When you home school, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the different print-outs and worksheets and manuals and books and of course, notes. Handle this problem by keeping the notes for each home school subject in a different folder or notebook. What about the current subjects of study? Keep those in a divided binder with a different section for each subject that you are currently working on in home school. Make sure that this is a loose leaf binder so that you insert and rearrange your notes as your home school study warrants.
Some study experts advise that you line up your notes on one side of the page only. This way, when you go back and want to make more notes on your notes (after a later home school session on the computer or a lecture or a DVD), you have room to write. Use regular sized loose leaf paper so that it's spacious enough for both rounds of note taking.
After you've placed your home school notes in your binder (and folders for home school subjects that you're done with but would like to keep for reference), organize the notes within the subject. To help you find things quickly and easily, make sure that the top of each page specifies the home school subject as well as the date. You may also note which chapter the notes are from or the name of the video, software program or website from which you are taking notes. If you have multiple pages per note taking session, you might like to number them. Or you could number the note pages consecutively over multiple sessions in each home school subject; whatever works best for you.
Keep the pages of your home school notes clean: that means store them immediately so that they don't get ripped or stained. It also means no scribbling in the margins! Stay focused on what you're learning and on what you're taking notes. Doodles have a tendency to be distracting and that won't help you when it comes time to study later. If you take notes in pen (which you absolutely should), it could also bleed through the page to the other side and obscure the notes you take there.
There's nothing like organization to keep your home school papers in order and there's no such thing as being too extreme when it comes to note taking in your home school studies. Take good clean notes when you are being home schooled—your success depends on it.
________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling mother, writer, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of home education company Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of 28 years reside with their 8 children right outside Philadelphia, PA.
Rothschild launched Learning By Grace, Inc. because she believed that our nation's public school system has failed parents and students. Learning By Grace, Inc. offers online education through a multimedia-rich curriculum to PreK-12 children across the country and throughout the world.
An accomplished author, Rothschild has written books regarding education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Homeschooling News Café Blog consists of the most current and relevant education news.Electronic reproduction of this article is permitted if content is published unchanged, appropriate credit is given, and the article title links to corresponding article webpage.
