Keeping Company :: September Invitation

Hello, friends!  September is here already, and with it, a refreshing change of season and a recommitment to schooltime habits.  I have loved sharing in the Keeping you have been doing during summer days, but I'm looking forward to reading more about how fall looks in your homes and your notebooks.

I've already seen lots of great entries describing new autumn Keeping habits and lots more.  If you haven't yet had a chance to check out the August link-up, please do!





Monthly Feature

There were a few posts in the last link-up that happened to be on the very same topic: butterflies!  With the end of summer comes the end of butterfly's favorite season, but hopefully you still have some around your area to enjoy as the hot days taper down.

Carol at Journey and Destination shares about Australasian butterflies through a few books they have been slowly savoring and nature journal entries from her children.

from Journey and Destination

Lisa at Olive Plants All Around My Table has a butterfly bush outside that's getting a lot of attention--but not just from the butterflies!  Are you considering how to make nature observation and recording an self-driven activity for your older students?  Take a peek at her daughter's inspiring work.

from Olive Plants All Around My Table

(And Amy at ...these are a few of my favorite things... just happened to include a lovely picture of a butterfly alongside her commonplace entry.  A coincidence?  Probably, but I couldn't resist!)

This month's optional prompt

I thought I'd ask this month about other kinds of notebooks.  We have talked quite a bit here about the Book of Centuries (or timeline, for younger ones), the nature journal, and the commonplace--the "big three," as Laurie Bestvater categorizes them in The Living Page.  But she also goes through so many others that come up in the context of Miss Mason's schools: foreign language notebooks, Calendars of Firsts, poetry collections, self-made homekeeping manuals, math and science notebooks for the upper grades...

We don't know as much about some of these--whether they were common among CM students or just a simple project by a classroom or two, whether they were meant to be lifelong or just for a term, and so on.  But I do think we can judge that there is room for more than just the Big Three for certain homes and certain students.  Have you had any success with other kinds of notebooks?  Are you adopting an extra CM-style notebook this year?  Do you have students keeping a music notebook, a Book of Mottoes, a Way of the Will chart?  I'd love to hear about it!

I'll be back here next Tuesday, September 8th, to post the next link-up.  Until then, feel free to add your posts on any CM Keeping topic to the August link-up!