Filing Day

No, this is not a day to talk about filing taxes.  However, I may have a bit of filing leftover from the last few weeks of schoolwork.

Yikes! (These papers go back to January!)

Yeah, I know.

There must come a time when we all recognize our weaknesses, right?!  I love to be organized, but I am not entirely disciplined to file at the end of each week.  I was doing really well at first, filing school papers in each child’s binder at the end of each day.

Yep, didn’t last too long.

Then I started getting piles of papers on my desk, not attractive and very distracting.  Wonders of wonders, I found this cute little green basket at the Dollar Store.  It became our “Turn In” basket.  That really was a good thing by helping Builder and Princess know where to place those finished products.  Unfortunately, the papers looked so neat and nice in that perfect little green basket that they haven’t quite made it into those perfect little school binders.

Sigh.

So, I find myself at the end of the school year shifting, organizing, and filing many many papers.  And you know what…that is completely ok with me.  Is it ideal to file every day or even once a week?  Sure.  Is it ok that I did not file weekly and now will make my way through this sea of papers and have a great binder of work for each one of them?  Yes.

Again, as with many things homeschool, I find myself realizing…it’s ok.  Either, or.  This way or that.  It works; it gets done.  I don’t have to stress about either way.  I love that at the end of my kids school career, they will have a binder for each year of their learning.  They will have fun looking back at what they have learned, remembering fun projects, and seeing the milestones they reached along the way.

And of course, they will be taking all 12 binders with them!!!

And you? ~  What are some of your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to school organization?

Organization: Daily/Weekly Sheets

Well, our one week break is over.  Today is the first day of our second six week session…and both kids are sick!

This is one of those days, I feel extra glad that we homeschool.  No call to the school.  No fear of falling behind on work.  Just wake up, and let them recover without worry or stress.

Onto how I use my Daily and Weekly Sheets:

Where I Start

This is my very generic sheet for the week.  We don’t do all subjects every day and I would lose my brain trying to remember what subject on which day.  So I made a very rough sketch to show what subjects what day.  I use this as my baseline for the weekly schedule.

Weekly Sheets

It took some trial and error to whether I was a plan by the day, week, moth, year, etc. kinda gal.  I tried it all and came down to weekly planning.  On Sunday afternoon, I take a look at where we left off last week and schedule for the upcoming week.  I only plan a Monday-Thursday schedule, because we inevitably take five days (or more) to do four planned days of work.  Music and Computer are planned for Friday, but that doesn’t always happen at this point in time.  During my Sunday planning time, I make sure to collect all resources needed for the week and to print whatever needs to be printed.  I tuck it all away in our lovely rainbow drawers.  And I am set for the week.

I have a weekly plan for Builder and a weekly plan for Princess.  I really like this set up because if the kids get interested in one subject area and want to go on to the next lesson and even the next lesson and more, that is fine.  I have all resources ready to go and I can simply check off the lessons completed.  It doesn’t matter if some of Wednesday is checked off on Monday.  Our goal is simply to complete all lessons by the end of the week.  It works the other way as well, if sick kids, doctors appointments, errands, life, etc. happen throughout the week and we are left completing some tasks on Saturday, we can simply check them off and it still works for that week.  This provides the structure and flexibility that I need.

I keep these sheets on my desk through the week and then they get filed into the front of the kid’s binder when I begin to plan for the next week.  It is also nice, that these weekly sheets filed in their folders creates a record of learning at the end of the year.

Daily Sheets

These are the sheets that Builder and Princess use daily.  They each have their own spiral.  Every night I look at my weekly plan sheet and list out what I would like to be done for the next day.  I also include their household task for the day.

At first we tried using the weekly sheet for Builder and Princess to check off their completed lessons, but it didn’t seem to work well.  The weekly sheet is a bit overwhelming to them, so I started making a daily list and it has worked much better.  It is also teaching a great life skill of list making.  My hope is that as they get older they will begin to take over the job of making their own to-do list.  We don’t keep this spiral in the binder.  Though it could be kept in the binder since it is 3-hole punched.

It is wonderful to finally find a rhythm that is working for us.  This set up paired with our daily routine has helped us accomplish much this year already.

Your Turn To Play – What have you found in your planning that works or doesn’t work so well?

Organization: 3-Ring Binders

To reiterate from prior posts, organization is very important to me.  I love being organized, though it is not my natural state.  While teaching in the public school system, I eventually began to see how finding organization in my classroom and routines gave me the little extra snippets of time that added up to an additional amount of time that was very beneficial.  It also helped relieve my frustration level when I could reach on my desk and find what I needed within 30-60 seconds rather than hunting for 5-10 minutes.

So, in my natural state, I started out our homeschooling journey being not too organized.  Last year I started my hunt for our best organization.  I have already shared how we have organized our school curriculum/materials (see post here).  Thanks to the wonderful world of Google, I read many a post on schoolwork organization.  After trying file boxes and hanging folders and others, it came down to a 3-ring binder system that works wonderfully for us.

The Beginning

In the front of the binder, in the pocket on the cover side, I have a progress chart.  We use the Easy Peasy curriculum for several of our subjects and I like to keep track of how we are progressing.  On the right side, I keep the weekly schedules that we have finished.  The one I am currently working on stays on my desk until the end of the week.  This also helps me keep track of our 6 week sessions and when they are coming to a close.

Beginning of Binder

Progress Chart

Weekly Schedule

The Rest

Under the weekly schedules, there are dividers for each of the subjects.  Most of our core subjects we do a variant of what is on the Easy Peasy curriculum and so a lot of it is online or we are reading and having conversations about the material.  Every so often there are practice worksheets, or lab reports, book reports etc. that are printed and can be filed behind subject dividers.  I chose to use tab dividers that have pockets, that way any book projects or other work that is not conducive to 3-hole punching, I can store in the pocket dividers for that section.

Subject Dividers

Math Divider

Divider Pockets

The Benefits

This has been a time and space saver for us.  We do have handwriting books and a spiral in which Builder does his Life of Fred math.  I will likely have each one pick 5-10 pages of the handwriting book that they feel represents their best pages and the spiral being 3-hole punched will be able to be clipped into the binder.

All-in-all the binder system is working well for us.  I do make myself file their papers each day, but it really is not that hard to file 3-5 papers a day.  I find it is worth what it is creating.  It is organized and by the end of the year there will automatically be a portfolio of their work.  Not to mention, Builder and Princess have fun picking out their special binder for the year.

Also, since I file my weekly schedule sheets in the front, we have a record of days taught, curriculum used, and lesson content covered.  For us, it has been a win-win.

Your Turn to Play –  How do you organize schoolwork?