Narration Notebooking and Family Trips!

Easy Way to prepare educationally for a trip

Our family recently returned from a bucket-list family trip to Kauai. My husband worked some points magic for hotels and flights, and we booked this trip nearly a year out for late February 2025. But our kids had no idea about this trip until Christmas, when we surprised them with this trip as their main gift! 

I knew that I wanted to spend some time in January and February studying Hawaii with our children: the animals, geology, culture and history, etc. I wanted us all to have some knowledge of this beautiful state before we traveled in hopes it would further enrich our adventures together. But I had a lot of plates I was juggling, so I needed something that was simple and not overly complicated, and that didn’t require too much prep or time from me. I did some research to try to find a simple curriculum that covered these topics for Hawaii, but couldn’t find what I was looking for in a curriculum. 

So I decided to rely on an “old faithful” for our Hawaiian studies: Narration Notebooking! If you’re unfamiliar with this term, narration is a common tool used to help children retain and restate what they’ve read or heard read aloud. Although not exclusive to a Charlotte Mason educational philosophy, it is foundational to this philosophy of learning. Often younger students narrate orally back to the teacher what they’ve heard so the teacher can gauge their level of comprehension. As students get older, they can begin to narrate using writing and drawing. Many homeschool families keep some kind of notebook for their students to narrate. Not only is it a powerful tool to help children build the habit of attention and to retain and retell information, but a notebook also serves as a wonderful keepsake for students to keep track of their learning. 

(If you want to learn more about narration and narration Notebooking, here are a few great places to start: )))))

We had a wonderful time learning about Hawaiian culture, geology, and biology together in the ~6 weeks we had leading our trip, and it was all very simple and manageable for me to put together. Here’s an easy three-step process by which you can create a simple yet effective educational plan for any topic of study:

1. Grab a stack of books from the library on your topic. I started by grabbing a massive stack of books from the library relating to Hawaii or Hawaiian geology and marine biology: sea turtles, coral reefs, sharks, volcanos, hula dancing, surfing, etc. 

2. Pick one element of your topic to explore each week. I picked one topic to read about during our family morning time together each week. I didn’t overthink this, I just grabbed a book on our given topic (ie Sea Turtles by Gail Gibbons) and read aloud for about 10 minutes or so. We probably read on that topic for 2-3 days each week. Then we also watched a few YouTube videos on that topic. (Pro tip - have them watch the YouTube videos at the kitchen table while you’re prepping lunch. That way you can listen in on the videos and get the kid’s lunch ready for a multi-tasking win!)

3. Have your children narrate orally or create a narration notebook page. For younger students, you can just simply ask them to tell you what they learned about sea turtles and have a conversation about it. For older students, you can ask them to create a narration notebook page. In this case, I had my three older students (aged 8, 11, and 13) write about any Hawaiian topic they wanted each week. My 8-year old son is asked to write 3-5 sentences, my 11-year old daughter is asked to write ~7-8 sentences, and my 13-year old daughter usually writes ~10-12 sentences. The length of narration will really depend on your individual student and what you think they are capable of writing. Then I ask them to create an illustration to go along with their narration - they are free to sketch, paint, use colored pencils, or any other medium that they choose. 

For some notebook narration assignments, I will correct spelling, grammar, etc. But in this case, I didn't - my goal was to keep it simple and fun! My kids do have grammar and spelling programs they use, and for some writing assignments we do correct these things. But for this particular instance, my main goal was to build a knowledge bank of some Hawaiian topics before we took our trip. 

This easy method of exploring a particular topic worked great for our family as we learned about Hawaii, but didn’t have time to build in a whole separate curriculum. This would be a great method to learn more about a location before a spring break or summer trip to a National Park or a new state, as a way to explore a particular season or holiday, or even as a way to build in student-led learning on a topic that excites your child. 

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or if you give it a try!