School Prep

    Every year I aspire to be more organized, more prepared for the school year.  Whatever little things I can do to make each school day easier is just a complete load off of my mind.  So after navigating the 40+ page thread on filing over at The Well Trained mind I set out to create my own system.

    My first change for the year was to seperate the year into 6 terms with a week long break in between. After a serious burnout a couple years back I realize I need more one week breaks throughout the year  and not a couple of longer breaks. 

Each term I assigned a color, most of them are 4-6 weeks long. I am very curious to see how this works for all of us and I am excited for the change. The color coding has made planning a lot easier as well.

    The second change I made this year is putting AJ and Ginny on a 4day a week schedule. This frees Friday up for more intensive subjects I need to work on with the older girls such as Latin and some of the Writing lessons. AJ and Ginny still have the same amount of work but I am spreading out Fridays' work over the first 4 days of the week.  I keep a schedule of subjects and the days I teach them on in my binder.

    

To anyone else it probably looks like an elaborate code but it all makes sense to me. I also keep a detailed week by week syllabus of sorts for science in this notebook.  This way I am able to quickly ascertain what projects, experiments or lessons we are covering at a glance.

    In the past I have always had a drawer for each kid which contains all of their workbooks for the year. This hasn't always been the best situation for a number of reasons. The first being that kids are so hard on workbooks!  These are glue bound and not spiral bound books so all of the opening, closing, shuffling around they look pretty ragged.  Not to mention having to have conversations like this on a weekly basis.

    "Go get your math book."

    "Mom!  My math book is not in my bin!"

    " Why not?  You should have put it back."

    "I think it's under my bed."

    So I decided to go with the filing system. Tearing apart all the workbooks was honestly very liberating. I chopped them all up and filed them week by week into the folders. I used a plain black crate for my files and I bought folders to correspond with the colors of each term.  I did not give any dates to each week to leave room for adjustments for instance if the kids got the flu for a week.  I could just move on to the next week and not be annoyed that it didn't match up because we missed some days of school.

I love a good ROYGBIV organization!  Makes me all tingly inside. *smile* (shhh...don't tell anyone but I organize my shirts by ROYGBIV too. )

Another angle...because it's so pretty.

    This crate actually begins at week 2 because I have a separate small bin for the current week.  more to come on that one in a minute. Inside each week folder is a packet of work for each kid for the week. The work includes spelling worksheets, writing prompts, math pages, history activities, experiment sheets etc...

    On Sunday nights I pull out the weeks work and file it into the Current week bin.  This is probably an extra, unnecessary step but I had the container and thought I'd go ahead and try it. I may abandon it later.  We'll just have to wait and see how it works out. In retrospect I probably won't need a Monday file in there because those papers will go right into the workboxes.

    The workboxes can be seen here.  So far I have 4 kids who are schooling. Each kid has a row of colored drawers, one for each subject. Surprise. Surprise.  They are ROYGBIV! 

Well..almost ROYGBIV, it's more like ROGBVB. When I opened the box for one of the carts I found that they had inadvertently included an extra red drawer.  This is now on top of the left cart and is our Completed Work to be Graded basket.

Right now it's full of blank paper. Another change this year is our History/Literature/Writing curriculum. We are using Tapestry of Grace which I have posted about before. Here is a binder for one of the four units in this Year.

   

     I have to add that as much as I LOVE this curriculum I am really annoyed by the misspelling of Renaissance on the cover. It's not misspelled on the spine. I need to email them about it. Inside I have all of the teacher notes and plans in page protectors so I can keep them nice for future years but also because I can take notes with vis a vis markers right on the protector if I need to.  

 

 Inside are also cd holders that hold my map aids cd roms and also evaluation cd roms.

   

 I have to comment on my new favorite organizational gadgets from my top go-to store for

organizing...IKEA.

   

 Aren't those the coolest? And they match the carts as well as these great lap desks the kids use for coloring on when we have family read aloud time.

   

     Extra supplies are kept in our big double door cupboard. You can see the kids old school drawers on the lower left. They are full of color books for the little kids now. There are also art supplies stored in there.

 

    On the other side of the room we have a small console table that holds our globe and also a green bin filled with extra reading books that fit in with the history period we are studying. The Aqua bin is filled with easy readers for the new readers in the family to read.  

    To the side of that table is our whiteboard area. Truthfully speaking we don't use it a whole lot but it's there to work with now and then. I sometimes do key word outlining on it or I will have an intensive math review using it. There is some random artwork on the bulletin board above it.

   

     In an intense effort to stop incurring library fines I have this bin in which the kids are always supposed to return their library books. (I almost wrote "to" at the end of that sentence. *gasp* Until I realized I almost ended my sentence with a PREPOSITION! This bin did not stop the kids from losing an audio disc and a copy of Flat Stanley. Grr...

 

    I chose not to take a picture of our big double bookcase because frankly, it's disturbingly messy. Jillian loves to pull all the books down lately and stack them on their sides. {{shudder}} Thanks for coming along on my little school room tour!

Comments

[Jen]

I ROYGBIV my closet too!!! With the front of the shirt facing left...

[handsfullmom]

Beautiful! I love all the colors and the organization. Good luck on a new school year.

[Jen]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/pr/valedictorian-against-schooling.html
Fascinating!

[Lisa]

I read that a week or two ago. Awesome!

[Jennifer]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing.

[Melanie]

oooooh! i love your room and your organization. I want ROYGBIV too!! My files are these horrible olive green army color. Not inspiring at all!!

Did you do your binders like that last year? I love the idea of having them all nicely labeled like that. I have only one 1 1/2 inch binder per kid and I know it's not going to be enough room for their stuff all year... but at the beginning they look SO big too me with only a few sheets in them.

I also love the idea of spreading out friday's work across the first 4 days of the week. I have always wanted to school Mon-thurs, but didnt' want to add on extra weeks to make up for the lost time on fridays. I'm going to have to think about that one... so smart!

[Jenni]

I almost wet my pants looking at this. My closet is ROYGBIVed too! :-)

[Karyn]

I love how organized you are...this is my goal. Thanks for the ideas.

P.S. I ROYGBIV my shirts, too. You are not alone. I also eat my skittles in rainbow order.

[dweej @ HouseUnseen]

Wow, wow, wow! You are my hero! We are just starting our homeschooling journey and all I can think about is how we need to paint the den and playroom before we can even start getting organized. That's how bad it is. Can't wait to put some of your ideas into practice.

[Julia]

You have given me sooo many great ideas for organization this school year! Love how you have it all in place...what a GREAT school room!

~Julia

[Honey]

Where can I find that color coded drawers?love it...

[Theresa]

Love, love, love, this post!!! I organize our school year into weeks and file items in each weeks folder too. :)

[bobbi]

I am a new homeschooling mom, and I love this post! It is so beautiful. I am a planner and an organizer - or at least I try to be. This is very inspiring. I am trying to figure out how to do school planning and figure out how I am going to organize our school room. Where did you get the racks with the colorful drawers?

[Lisa]

Your classroom looks wonderful! I'm working on organizing today and came across your blog while looking for ideas. I love the rainbow colors too, so bright and happy!

[lindsey]

Yes where are those drawer bins from?

[Leah]

You're so organized and it looks like your doing a GREAT job...From an 'old' homeschooler :-)

[Amy]

You're clearly very organized (yay, you!), but something here is bugging me a little:

If the kids don't complete all of the work for the given week (they're struggling with a concept can't quite get it all finished, they get engrossed in one topic and you want to stretch it out a little longer, etc.), do you just re-parcel the subsequent weeks' work into the other folders? In some ways your system doesn't look that different from public school pacing guides.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a public school teacher who is very interested in the whys and hows of homeschooling :)

[Kirsty]

Awesome CLASSROOM! Thanks so much for sharing it, it has given me so much inspiration to put into action :)

[Mae]

I'm a public school teacher that organizes each grade level I teach by color as well. It coordinates with our curriculum but anyway...I love the ROYGBIV drawers you have and was wondering where you got them???

[TracyMichele]

You had me at "ROYGBIV". :)

[Kimmie H]

Let me just say that I am in awe of you. I wish you could come over for a play date and help me get this organized. I don't know why I can't seem to get a flow going to organize our homeschool supplies. What advice can you give me to help with organizing my school? FYI though, we have no space to really designate to school. We do it in the living room, my dd's bedroom and at the kitchen table. I'm trying to organize my papers, her school books, our templates,(we lapbook&notebook), arts & craft supplies, it's rather exasperating. We can't even utilize my daughters bedroom because she has an 8'x8' dance floor in there. (she is a competative Irish Dancer. I am open to suggestions. Thank You!!! You really do have an amazing school area.