Joshua, though an avid writer, has always been reluctant when it comes to notebooking.   This has never been attitude but rather expressed as personal preference, something that we’ve dealt with light heartedly.  Through various “negotiations” we have agreed to come to a “compromise”.  Our vocab has been the biggest thing.  He understood certain words to mean one thing and I used  them to mean another.

Our compromise is like this….  We store all our written work in binders.  (He doesn’t do Notebook Pages for his Notebook!)  His preferred style is paragraph writing, report writing – nothing creative, nothing anything like scrapbooking and we don’t call it Notebooking we call it written assignments.

Mind you I did get a little softening of the “heart” when he listened to Cindy Rushton’s presentation to Teenagers on Notebooking but he still maintained his style was not Notebooking.  He got a big kick out o hearing that Matthew Rushton and his sister were as different in their presentations and he and his sister, Jess are.

Tonight…He tells me, “I’ve started notebooking Isaac Newton’s style” – and he shows me 3 mini spiral bound note pads. 

“What do you mean you’ve started Notebooking?”  I ask, trying to keep my voice nice and level.

“Well,” he replied, “Isaac Newton kept notebooks of all the things he found interesting – it worked for him so I guess it will work for me!” 

“Mmmm” replied a stunned mother!!  “What have you written?”  He read a portion from a book on Knights where the author is comparing the hierarchy of the Knight society, of medieval times, with Business society of today.  It was a very interesting couple of paragraphs that had a lot to think about in terms of business ethics today.  Josh told me he was copying the whole thing down.

He continued to tell me he also has started a Nature / Science Notebook (I won’t even start to tell you the story of disinclination with Nature Journals!!!)  He has copied a recipe for blue paint (something along the lines of berries and alum water) from Medieval times.

The temptation was strong…. Do I tell him that is what I am on about? …. Do I tell him he is doing copywork?  …. Do I tell him that it appears that he has a new style? (tongue in cheek!)  …. Do I??  Do I??

No…. I don’t!  I let him continue to think that he is copying Isaac Newton – a scientist whom he obviously has some time for and I keep my happy mummy smile to myself and my cyberspace friends!