How to Make Interactive Notebooks Manageable

Interactive notebooks can be a lot of fun for kids. They are an amazing tool for your learners both at home and in public schools. However, you need to make interactive notebooks manageable instead of letting them take over.

composition notebooks on table with text overlay

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How to Make Interactive Notebooks Manageable

My first step to success is to leave three to five blank sheets at the beginning of the notebooks for title pages, table of contents, teaching standards, etc.

Pick a sturdy notebook. In my opinion composition notebooks work the best for these notebooks. They are sturdy notebooks, the pages won’t fall out or rip out easily. You do not want to rip out a page from it or you’ll have another page fall out from the opposite side of the notebook.

Pick your glue wisely. Personally, I like the ease of using glue sticks. They aren’t as messy as white glue, they aren’t going to saturate the paper and then tear it.

Extra copies. Or at least have the ability to make a copy quickly. Someone is going to mess it up, even if you give amazing directions while modeling it for your learners.

Simple planning. I am a plan by the seat of my pants kind of person. Interactive notebooks make it easy as I just print, or copy pages, in our book and go. Don’t worry about planning out the whole notebook from the beginning, just enjoy learning with your kids.

Use printer paper. You don’t have to be fancy and use colored paper. Using white paper is cheaper, and your kids can get creative and color their pages how they want.