Rocketbook in the Garden
“Mama, can I grow some of my own things in the garden this year?”, my five-year-old daughter (who I will call “C”) asked one night as we were enjoying dinner as a family. Of course, my husband and I immediately said, “YES!”. We have had a garden at our home for two summers already, and our daughter has been an integral part of every part of it. She helps plan. She helps plant, She weeds. She waters, She harvests. And my goodness, does she LOVE to eat what we have grown.
My husband and I are both teachers, and our schools each have an amazing garden. In fact, every school in the city has an amazing garden! Every year, my students and I plant peas and engineer our own trellises to help support the pea plants as they grow. We keep journals, measure, observe and collect data on our plants as they grow. We even study the garden journals that Thomas Jefferson kept in order to understand that failure and success are both inevitable in nature.
Suddenly, an idea popped into my head. I could create a Rocketbook gardening journal to use at home with C and work out the kinks at home to get it ready for my elementary students to use next year in our school gardens! I was especially excited that we could use any writing tool since we’d be using printable paper!
Creating templates on printable Rocketbook pages is easier than you would think! Here is what I did:
- Go to this website to choose any printable page you’d like. I used the dot grid pages. https://getrocketbook.com/pages/rocketbook-for-free
- Download your page as a PDF, then screenshot the entire page, being careful to include the entire black line on the outside.
- Find a template you like, or make one in Google Docs (or your preferred program).
- Screenshot the template, and save that as a PDF.
- Open up Google Slides and click “start a new presentation”.
- Delete the text boxes on the page.
- Click File > Page Set Up > Custom
- Type in the paper size you’ll be using. (I did 8.5x11).
- Click on Background, then Choose Image.
- Upload your desired Rocketbook Background and click Done.
- Click on Insert > Image > Upload from Computer
- Upload the screenshot of the template you made.
- Move your template around so it fits how you’d like it to. You need to make sure the black border is 100% visible, and the bottom line of dots is also visible.
- Print it and test it on the Rocketbook app to make sure it shows all of your template.
When I printed out the Rocketbook Garden Journal for C, she was thrilled and immediately asked to make her first entry! She drew the four plants she’s chosen to grow this year and drew a picture of each of them! She loves how “grown-up” it looks and feels to make this journal on Rocketbook pages, and we love her motivation and the ease we have of sharing her work.
We’ll continue to share our Rocketbook Gardening Journal Journey with you!
Here’s a link to the Garden Journal pages I made for C! https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1K8CqUBma6VYkQCgqb5kmZY8xSdBcadLKLRZn_3ccqU4/edit#slide=id.p
