Notebooks.

Last month I bought about half a dozen cheap spiral notebooks.   I labeled them with a Sharpie:  "History/Geography," "Science/Nature," and so on.  I put them in an upright magazine file and stowed them in my homeschooling cabinet.

Now I have a place to write down my ideas for the future.

Originally I planned to use a big three-ring binder, but the advantage of the spirals is their portability.  A couple of weeks ago I read a history of Minnesota (I didn’t grow up here, but here we are, and here’s where my kids will first learn history) and I carried  the "History" notebook around with it and took notes.

After sifting through it all, I settled on eight topics of Minnesota history and geography to work into the elementary years somewhere.  This is straight out of my notebook:

1. Prehistoric Minnesota.  Ice Age, Lake Agassiz, animal life, fossils, and early humans with the evidence they left.  Begin time line.
2. The Dakota and the Ojibwe.
3. Natural and manmade features of Minnesota:  major rivers, lakes, regions, neighboring states, capital, major cities.
4. Explorers and fur traders; contact with Dakota, Ojibwe.
5. Minnesota Territory.  Pioneers.  Minnesota becomes a state.
6. Dakota Conflict and U. S. Civil War (contemporaneous, influenced each other).
7. Logging.  Rail roads.  Milling.  History of the rise of the Twin Cities.
8. The State Park system.  Museums, public works.

There’s also a scrawled note I added later:  "Also—History of Catholics in MN."  Yes, that would be a good idea, too.