Lookin' for some fresh ideas for the summer months here are a few ideas to create notebooks with (and I'd love to hear some of yours too) these projects can be  fun and need not take but a few minutes everyday or every other day :

1.  Neat places to visit within 1 or 2 hours of my home - what a neat thing to do.  Could even make it more interesting by finding places to visit that cost under $5 or whatever.  And most places have postcards to purchase (but take along the camera and record it).

2.  My Backyard field guide to (plants, bugs, the trees, the garden . . . or everything).  This is something I plan to do with my five year old this summer (very loosely - more fun than for education purposes . . . the education just happens along the way).  I plan to help him find bugs to draw or color or photograph, flowers to press, color or photograph, same with the garden and I will be his hands and write it out for him.

3.  My Garden notebook.  I challenge you to have an older child keep a Garden journal.  This can be with pictures, drawing and so forth. But keep track of what you planted where and how you planted it.  For instance we just planted 3 rows of potatoes with some Cayenne pepper (that is soppose to keep down bugs and other problems). We noted which rows we did this with and will be able to chart the differences.  There is so much to journal you may have to narrow it a bit for a nonwriter.

4. Building projects notebook.  If you have a dear husband that is handy and can work on these projects with the kids, this could be a real blessing. I was looking through some gardening/home catalogs and noticed some really neat things that could be built rather easily and much cheaper than the hefty prices they were offered for.  This notebook could be filled with sketches and catalog pictures and then finished projects.

5.  American History in my area - there is alot of American history around here (Erie Canal, Fort Stanwix, and many many other neat places).  Again alittle writing goes a long ways with pictures colored (from those neat coloring books on American history), photos, postcards and so forth.

6.  Sandbox creations.  Now maybe your children aren't as crazy about sand as mine are.  But my kids make the neatest castles and roadways and so forth. They'd make great photos as their sand creations only last a few days.

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