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Make Your Own Spiral Bound Notebooks
By Debra | June 29, 2008
(There has been lots of discussion lately about how to create your own spiral bound notebooks, so I’ve pulled up and edited this old post from my other blog.)
This is one of the greatest little tools I’ve found for notebooking. I thank my friend Angi for introducing it to me a few years ago! It’s called ProClick and it’s a binding tool. Basically, it’s one long hole puncher that punches little holes all down the side of your paper to fit into the special ProClick spiral spines.
What is awesome about these spines is that you can easily open and close them. So you can start your new notebook with just your front/back cover (designed by the author of course, your child!) and then as they create their pages, they simply slide the puncher down the side of their paper, “unzip” their spine, put in the page, and zip it back up. The spines come with a little plastic “zipping” tool that opens and closes the spines. You can do it manually, but the zip tool is so much more fun!
You can make just about any size notebook that you want because the spines are very easy to cut. You can even create a landscape style notebook! The kids enjoy making mini-scrapbooks with all of our scraps and leftover supplies. The only downside is that the largest spines do not hold much more than 85-100 sheets of regular paper, so even less if using cardstock. What I do for our bigger notebooking subjects, like history, is to either keep separate notebooks for different time periods or put the pages into sheet protectors at the end of the year into one big 3-ring binder.
We used to use the big 3-ring binders for all of our notebooking, but they became so cumbersome for little hands. I LOVE the ProClick spines because the notebooks are easier to handle, they lay flat so you can keep your pages in the notebook while you work on them if you like, you can easily put pages in and take pages out, and unlike “unprotected” sheets in your 3-ring binders they don’t rip out so easily.
It’s also great for combining the mini-books that you do for lapbooking with notebooking. If you’re used to putting your finished notebooking pages in sheet protectors, it’s a little hard to view the minibooks. Since these spines are better at keeping your pages intact, you really don’t need the extra protection of a sheet protector and so the mini-books are more accessible. Of course, a lot of hands-on contact will begin to show without the protection of sheet-protectors, but that’s just the sign of a well-loved notebook, isn’t it? Oh, I also have used it to punch through transparencies without any problems. I don’t know that it’s recommended, but just thought I’d tell you it works for me!
Here’s a demo picture I put together showing how to use the ProClick binding tool to make your own notebooks (click for closer view):
The best place I’ve found for purchasing this binding tool is at Amazon . I search online for the spines and buy them in bulk for a better deal at the beginning of each school year.
You can view a close-up of one our kids’ notebooks here to see a close-up of the spines or visit our website to read more about this binding tool and other supplies we use for notebooking.
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Topics: General Info, Notebooking News, Organization & Scheduling | 5 Comments »
July 18th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Hi Debra,
I tagged you on my blog:
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/vahomeschoolmom/562521/
You’re it!
Blessings,
Heather L.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:00 am
The only problem I have with the proclick (as I have come very close to buying it before) is that I can not find spines that hold enough paper for us. I’ve been currently looking into purchasing (or saving for) a spiral binder. I’ve spent enough over the years at our office supply store for them to bind our notebooks that I could have bought two. LOL. Some of our history notebooks even broken down into four units/quarters get as many as 150 sheets.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
December 31st, 2009 at 4:31 pm
This is very helpful, I’d find this very useful and a lot better than what we use. Please can you tell us which Proclick Binder machine you recommend? I went onto Amazon, but it’s confusing cos there are so many models. Thanks so much.
January 1st, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Hi Lindy,
I updated the links in the blog post. I use the ProClick P50 Model. It’s about $50-60. Amazon used to offer a great package deal with the spines, but they discontinued it last I checked.