Top 10 Must Have Supplies for Notebooking
Please note that the list below are MY must haves. Not everything on this list is necessary when notebooking! :) Also, my kids are older and we don’t use some of these things anymore but we used to use most of them everyday.
1. A Good Printer
If you are a notebooking family, then you print – A LOT! There are lots of great printers out there. You can choose a regular printer – of which most come with a scanner, fax and copier as well. Some have photo printing added, which I find nice for notebooking. I use the Epson WorkForce 630 wireless printer, as of a few months ago. It does not print photo quality but my husband bought it for me for Christmas and there are lots of things about it I like. The quality is very good regardless of it not being a photo printer. I know many of you have laser printers and someday, in the future, I’d like to get myself one of those!
2. Paper
I know this is obvious, as is the printer. But, there are different weights and types of paper and I use them in different ways. I’ll list below the types of paper below and how I use them.
- 20lb weight – This is your standard copy paper. If we put our pages in page protectors, I will use this weight. It’s a lighter weight paper and will more often then not tear out of a binder. So putting them in page protectors works well. If you choose to put them in a binder, another option are those stickers to reinforce the holes. This doesn’t always work well though in my experience.
- 24lb weight – This is a heavier weight copy paper. We use this weight for most of our pages. A light weight mini-book can be added to these pages – usually just one small fold, with no problem. I will place this weight into a binder but will reinforce them with the hole stickers.
- Card stock – We use this weight when we want to add heavier mini-books to our notebooking pages. Goes into a binder nicely.
- Construction paper – When my kids were younger we used construction paper rarely. I’m not a big fan of it because it’s very light weight and rips easily. I prefer colored paper from the weights above.
I use lined paper, sketch paper, tracing paper and other types as well. But the ones above are the ones I use the most or in the case of the construction paper, don’t like at all.
3. Binders
I use all sizes, depending on the subject or study. If the study grows, we move to a larger binder. Binders can get pricey, so I look at thrift stores or buy in bulk at Sam’s Club or Costco.
4. Pens, Pencils…
There’s not much to say about this one. I just have lots of different types of things to write with on hand. Besides the ones above, we also use, colored pencils, markers of different sizes, water color pencils, and we would also paint occasionally.
5. Paper protectors
When using a binder, I usually use page protectors. They sell two different types – clear and a matte finish. I only use the clear because the matte finish makes the pages a little fuzzy (if that’s the right word).
6. Three hole punch
Because most of the notebooking pages I use are printed out onto copy paper, I use my 3 hole punch quite a bit.
7. Scissors and Adhesives
The scissors are for cutting out mini-books, illustrations or whatever else we want to add to the page. The types of adhesives I like best are glue sticks and double stick tape.
8. ProClick Binding Machine
I’ve been using the ProClick Binding Machine for about 5-6 years now and it’s a great tool. You can read my review of it here.
9. Internet
Let’s face it, without the internet we’d have a hard time finding the notebooking pages we need (unless we make our own), the resources we need, and images to add to our pages. I don’t know what I’d do without it and I know most of you feel the same. What a great time to homeschool and notebook!!
10. Great books
You are going to want to find the best books to go along with your study. You can often find lists for your study online. There are so many homeschool bloggers out there blogging about their study and it’s great to utilize the information they share. It’s rare that I find a book on Amazon that got a bad review that we didn’t like, so I use that a lot. We also use the library on a regular basis.
This post is linked up at Top Ten Tuesday
