Wednesday, July 2, 2008

An Organized Home School System

Well it works, if you work it. That has been my own personal experience. Just as my kids need structure and organization, so do I. It has been a goal for me to organize all the school "stuff" and have it in one place. Ever since I evicted the kids from the sewing room, things have been scattered. Some things remained in the sewing room, others went to the pantry. Some went to the big pantry and I found Charlotte's bucket in the upstairs closet. That is exactly where it stayed, and everything else was moved to. This closet is in the upstairs hallway just outside the kids bathroom and my sewing room door. It is narrow, but tall...8 ft. tall. It has wonderful shelving and until today housed the kids bedding and some puzzles. A total waste of space, not to mention a MESS!!I cleaned it out and put the kids sheets and bedding neatly in their own closets. They both have wonderful shelving in the tops of their closets, and are for the most part empty.
I bought $1 dishpans and organized ALL homeschooling supplies.
The top couple of shelves have bins labeled TEACHER MOM, and FUTURE CURRICULUM. My bin holds my scheduling, and master books, and the other hold any thing for the future. For example, I was given the 3rd grade Saxon math and will not use it for another year. In this bin it is safe for when I need it.The next shelf hold bins labeled, ART SUPPLIES and EXTRA SUPPLIES. In our town, the school supplies will be picked over in the next couple of weeks. It will be very difficult to get anything good so now is the time I stock up for use in September.Everything is labeled with the child's name so there is no fighting! The EXTRA SUPPLIES bin holds extra paper, folders, pencils, erasers, etc.
Next are CHARLOTTE and ZACHARY's bins. They will grab these every morning when coming to the table. After school is over, they will go back on their shelf. I am putting 2 stackable trays on my desk for them to put completed work that needs to be corrected.
The bottom shelf holds all the math manipulative's and the shape bucket.
We use these often and TJ loves them too.
On the floor is the file box. It holds completed work for the year. When work has been graded and corrected it gets filed here.Charlotte is red and Zach is blue. Each has a folder for each subject. The yellow is mine and holds tests to be given, master lists, etc.
At the end of the year, all work will be put in a box, taped up and marked
"CHARLOTTE AND ZACHARY SCHOOL YEAR 2007-2008"
Our state has no guidelines for Homeschool, but I save it ALL...just in case.
So I now have a system in place for our supplies. Now I am going to figure out and set up an organized plan of learning for our first half of the new school year. Choosing books and curriculum...it is as fun as shopping for new school clothes to a public schooler! Thanks to Donetta, and her generous gift of Zachary's math curriculum, I will have extra to put into building our heritage library. We do much of our schooling from there.
What are your systems for organizing your home school? What about organizing your sewing supplies? Or your kitchen? Share some of your organizing tips!! I would love to learn them.
Of course TJ needed some supplies for Grandma's house too. He is a regular Picasso!!!
SAY CHEESE!
What a fun mess!!Look up at Grandma!I got a Preschool workbook with tear out pages for when TJ is here and the kids are doing school. TJ can join in. I think he may be here a couple of mornings a week after Baby Emerson is born. Rachel will need that morning nap!!! That is ok. TJ can come to Grandma's Preschool!! See, homeschooling DOES work!!!!

6 comments:

Angie said...

I'm so impressed with your organization!

Rachel is a lucky DIL! You two have a lot of love for each other and I really admire that.

Susan said...

I am not super-organized with anything, let alone homeschool. Somehow my children are learning, though. I do have separate folders for each child, where I keep their tests and other papers that I want to keep till the end of the year. We came from Texas, where there are no requirements, and here in BC there are no requirements as long as you are not enrolled in a distance-learning school. We tried that for one year and it was a disaster, because I was not used to keeping all those records and papers. Now I'm in the middle and enjoying not having to be so meticulous while maintaining some order in case anyone needs to see proof that we are schooling.

We use Switched-on Schoolhouse for the majority of our subjects, which has automated lesson-planning and grading, giving me records from that.

My husband was a Christian-school principal in Texas for 6 years, and he has assured me, when I'm nervously throwing away worksheets and such from the year, that they never kept anything other than the students' grades once the school year was finished. That's hard to swallow, but all I have kept after the year is over are the grade records. We have graduated one and started him in Bible college, and our other two are in 12th and 10th grades, and we have had zero trouble with proof of grades, even with the BC schools when we did distance-learning that one year.

That's my experience of nine years, plus three of just one child before we started homeschooling all of them.

~katie~ said...

Bren,
You are an inspiration to me! Thanks for the tips! Also thanks for your support regarding encouragement in homeschooling! :-)
Well, I'm a rookie at this, but with one year under my belt, I think we did fine. However, I see a lot of room to grow and improve in organization, planning, and the like. I did have two three-ring binders. One was his kindergarten portfolio displaying completed work/projects/etc in each subject; the other binder had dividers for attendance/field trips; preK assessment; lesson plans; what we did each day; library books; list of books he read by himself; and some other documentation type stuff. I am going to put all the workbooks he completed and his portfolio in a bin like you have and label it with his name and schoolyear.

I look forward to reading others tips as well.

Blessings!
Katie

copperswife said...

Wow, it looks great!!

I love the paint smear on TJ's cheek!

In Pursuit of His Call said...

Great job! I plan to home school my children when they're school age. Now I have an idea how to organize...I won't necessarily have a whole closet to dedicate to homeschooling stuff, but the concept of keeping all the homeschooling items organized in one localized area is a great tip!

Thanks for such great inspiriation!

Julie said...

I love the $1 dishpan idea. I use milk crates to house my kids stuff, but it is so not organized. Let me finish this laundry first. LOL