We are in the middle of our lovely summer holiday, but before long the next school year will be here and I have been slowly collecting and planning for the start of year six and seven with Ambleside Online.
Previous years I have made student planners for the boys (you can see the free printables for the Lord of the Rings style planner here if you’re interested) but this year I decided to change things up a bit.
I have LOVED using the Traveler’s Notebook for myself for the past couple of years (you can see pictures and read more about it here) and as I have looked at all of the notebooks that have been kept and are now being added in year seven I thought I would utilize a Traveler’s Notebook for my year 7 student (and I am still deciding what to do with my year 6.)
Basically, a Traveler’s Notebook is a leather (or canvas) book cover that holds multiple slim notebooks, held together with elastic bands. As one notebook fills up it is simple to replace with a blank one.
With Ambleside Online there are various opportunities for using a different notebook for organizing different subjects. For some, it works better to use one notebook for everything – this is how we have worked in the past with the student planner, with a couple additional books for nature drawing and their timeline. But I think utilizing a Traveler’s Notebook will be a wonderful tool for the upper years of AO. When I showed my son he was thrilled, so I think his organizing-loving-heart will really enjoy this method.
I opted to make our own Traveler’s Notebook again this time (and I promise, a how-to is coming! I have started taking pictures and writing it!) Making your own is pretty simple and straightforward if you’re using leather (no sewing!), very inexpensive if you can find the right size scraps, and totally customizable to the size of notebooks you want to use.
What I want to share here are the notebook covers I made for the various notebooks – my boys laughed when I showed them and they’re excited to fill in the faces, which wasn’t my original intent, but they’re welcome to!
I am using A5 size notebooks and the notebook covers are designed to fit them. One day I may make our own notebooks (I have made my own for my own Traveler’s Notebook and it’s amazing the difference quality paper makes!) but for now I purchase them. You can find the A5 notebooks with all the options for lined, blank, dot or grid here. As you can see in the pictures below, I used patterned notebooks I already had on hand in this size – next time I’ll be buying the Kraft covered ones I linked to. They’re the same size and will have a cleaner look.
Here is what I did for each notebook:
Maps – blank pages
Narrations – lined pages
Science – grid pages
Math – grid pages
Nature Journal – blank pages
Common place notebook – lined pages
Copywork – lined pages
Current Events – lined pages
Schedule – blank pages
We are using the same timeline book they’ve been using since we started keeping track, so we don’t have a special notebook for timeline, but if I had made one it would be a blank paged notebook. (And I did make a cover for it if you need it!)
I made notebook covers and printed them on half page shipping labels like these so all I had to do was peel and stick – super easy! They’ll work just fine printing on printer paper and using double sided tape or glue to attach to the notebook.
Included in the pdf is also a “fill it in yourself” label – for subjects you may wish to add or just if you prefer this look!
The pdf is six pages, with two notebooks covers per page. If you do not need all of the notebook covers you can just pick which of the pages you want printed. All of the pages are black and white, suitable for any printer.
Download and print the notebook covers here.
While I am happy to share this with my fellow homeschool community, please no selling or distributing of this product for personal gain. Please feel free to share this link!
Have a wonderful rest of the summer.
BRC_mackenzie
Those are awesome! I’ve just been pondering how to make my own travelers notebook for homeschooling and how I could incorporate it into our keeping. My oldest is only in y4 so we are just now adding new notebooks to what has been a fairly streamlined system.