Getting organized - please share ideas!

[mom4knights]

Hello! I have started thinking about how I can stay organized with all the books/papers etc. and wondered if others would share how they set up their "schoolroom".

 

I loved the ideas of the rain gutter bookshelves listed on an earlier thread. I had also seen Sue Patrick's workbox system and some variations on it:

 

http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-were-using-workboxes.html

 

http://www.rubyslippersschool.com/2009/03/work-boxes.html

 

http://courtneysix.blogspot.com/search/label/workboxes

 

These all look like great ideas for ways to keep my daily tasks organized (and my dc on track!:)).

 

Does anyone else mind sharing (include pics if you can! :D) how you organize your room? How do you organize desk area? books? papers? crafts/drawings?

 

Thanks so much for sharing your ideas!

[Sue G in PA]

Mainly wanted to bump you up, b/c I am always interested in how others organize. I have a 5-shelf built-in bookshelf in our kitchen/dining room where we do most of our schoolwork. The top shelf is for my teacher manuals, shared books/curriculum and misc. supplies/books. The next shelf is for my ds10 and ds12 (for next year). Each will have their books in a colored milk-crate (purchased from Target). Next shelf is for ds9 and ds7. Each will have a different colored milk crate for their books/supplies. Next shelf is for dd4 and ds2. Again, different colored crates to hold supplies/books, etc. The bottom shelf will hold a basket or crate with our HOD program supplies/books/read-alouds, etc. That is my plan so far. Dd13 has a bedroom right off the dining room so she will keep her books/supplies there. We have a linen closet that we converted to a game/supply closet which, again, is right off the dining room. We have 2, 6-drawer units to hold math manipulatives, puzzles, paper, calculators, rulers, etc.. My "office" is right off the dining room as well (in another direction!) and has 2 more bookcases for History, Science, Art, Music, Geography, novels, Encyclopedias, reference books, etc. The computer is in there and a baker's rack with different bins for library books, coloring books, etc. It used to have my MFW K books all organized in one bin but we are finished with MFW now. HTH a little. I do hope to get more bookshelves soon b/c we are running out of room!

[Melenie]

I am also interested to hear what others are doing.

This is only our K year and I have tried work boxes, subject boxes and book shelves. We have a small space so I have some in the garage, some in the living room and more in the study closets. I just do not have the space to have it all in one place.

 

http://www.tutormygirls.com/?p=1139

third post from the top, for some reason I cannot link right to it right now.

 

above is a link to how we started the year, but right now our daily work is stuffed in the book shelves and I pull them out as we need them. O, and the book shelves are full now!

Edited May 6, 2010 by Melenie

[TxMama]

Our workboxes.

 

I really should clean up our schoolroom and take some pics! :tongue_smilie:

[Barefoothomeschooler]

I started Workboxes and we loved them. THEN we moved!! I now have a homeschool room, which I never had before, but have not started the Workboxes again. I have everything in the school room but it just does not seem to flow. I need to rework the space and get my Workbox butt in gear:lol:. we only have a few weeks left in this school year so I will be planning how to get it all together and fit those workboxes back in. I am loving the stacking drawers idea and think I can fit 4 of those in the room with ease. Now to find them on my island could be another issue!

[Colleen in SEVA]

:lurk5:

[Mynyel]

I started Workboxes and we loved them. THEN we moved!! I now have a homeschool room, which I never had before, but have not started the Workboxes again. I have everything in the school room but it just does not seem to flow. I need to rework the space and get my Workbox butt in gear:lol:. we only have a few weeks left in this school year so I will be planning how to get it all together and fit those workboxes back in. I am loving the stacking drawers idea and think I can fit 4 of those in the room with ease. Now to find them on my island could be another issue!

 

 

Here are some drawers...Should be stackable! Gotta love Amazon!!

 

http://www.amazon.com/Sterilite-20938003-3-Drawer-Organizer-See-Through/dp/B002BA5F70/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1273186762&sr=8-17

[LisaKinVA]

I've never done anything like that, but I'm sure my mother would love it. I just can't handle it.

 

I have a color-coded schedule I made on excel, and print out. It goes on the back side of the clear-view binder. It has the Days and Times for each lesson, play, etc.

 

I have a master schedule for myself that has all three children's schedules, so I know where I'm supposed to "be" next.

 

The school books and work books are on each child's shelf. Extra books (books we don't yet need) are on a different set of shelves by subject (art, music, science, history, literature, reference, etc.)

 

Since we use an online school, our daily schedule is all on-line. Prior to that, I had a lesson plan print out for each child, which listed the that day's assignments (I'd print a week out at a time). I used Edu-Track.

 

Markers are in the Marker bin. Crayons are in the Crayon Bin, Pens & Pencils are in the Pencil Basket. I tried to give each child their own "set" of school supplies. They never made it through a week. Now, it's just communal.

 

Nothing fancy. But, at least I can keep up with it.

[mom4knights]

Thanks everyone for the ideas!

 

For Sue G in PA ~ OH, to have my own "office"!!! :0)

 

And Lisa K in VA ~ I really like the idea of having the separate bins for supplies. This year each ds got their own pencil box for supplies but I keep hearing . . . "that one is my crayon!" :-) So, I think next year they will all go in one big bin and everyone can share!

 

HS Lover ~ thank you for the link to the boxes on amazon. I had also found them at Walmart.com for $30 (with free ship-to-store) but I really like the idea of them coming straight to me! :-)

 

Wendy B & Melenie ~ thank you, thank you for posting pics! I love visuals!

 

Bahamamamahomeschooler - can I just say that I am also "drooling" about a separate room for hs!!! :-)

 

Any more ideas??? :-)

[Sue G in PA]

Jenny, the "office" is the laundry room, fitness room, catch-all room...certainly not the "office" that one should "covet". That is, unless you enjoy working around a mountain of laundry! LOL! I am grateful for the space, though!

[Wee Pip]

I love this blog post and hope to try something similar:

http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/2010/04/organizing-school-paperwork.html

[MaMa2005]

Our schoolroom is on a four season porch that is 50 feet by 14 feet. Half of the room is used as DS's playroom/den and the other half is DH's office, my office and the schoolroom. Since it is where we 'live' most of the time, it was imperative that we get it organized. We also entertain quite a bit and needed things to look 'nice'.

 

Here are the before and after pictures of our organization.

http://sheridans-shenanigans.info/?p=1168

The storage units were purchased as closeout items at IKEA.

I love the fact that all the mess is behind CLOSED doors!!!!!:D

 

The only negative about our schoolroom is that I have no place for large maps, art projects, posters, etc to be hung. Since the four season porch is all windows on three sides, there just isn't a place for those things. So we keep our big maps and all rolled up and just lay them out when needed.

 

ETA: I keep the books we are currently working on in two Desktop Apprentice Organizers that sit on my desk. Still neat and very handy.

[johnandtinagilbert]

Each child has a couple shelves on a bookshelf for cubbies. They keep their 4in binders, folders, spiral notebooks there, basically, all of their personal materials. These are in their bedrooms simply by space and design of our home.

 

I have 4 total shelves under my white board where I keep all of my TM and also the library books we're reading in science and history, as well as, the spines we own in those subjects.

 

I have a little station (a very small bookshelf) with all the paper for daily use and red boxes labels as pencils, glue, map pencils, etc for the supplies we regularly use.

 

My desk has all of my office supplies and file folder drawers with TOG and science lesson plans ready to grab and use for every week.

 

We have a personal library with many bookshelves to hold all of our books and curriculum that are not in use. It's a very small room (large enough for a twin bed and dresser, but not much more), so we use it as our "library." It's very organized: books in dewey decimal sys. and curr. organized via subject.

 

We school at our dining table, where I have a huge white board. This I call my "work station" b/c it's where I get my teaching done, but also have 3 student desks strategically placed throughout the house...spaces where they can work with quiet and little distraction. Each of those desks has a pencil caddy.

 

You'll find you'll waste a ton of time during transition from one subject to the next, so I'd encourage you to have them bring out notebooks for say 2 or 3 subjects at a time and have writing utencils on hand anywhere they sit for school.

 

They have lapboard and trays available if they want to work in their beds or on a couch :)

 

I think that covers everything....bookshelves, bookshelves, bookshelves. After 12 years of doing this...they're everywhere!

[mom4knights]

Sarah ~ thank you for the link to homeschool creations blog - I love her blog also but had not found these organizers on it yet!

 

MaMa2005 ~ thank you for the pics of your room, I really like them. I love the storage closets you got (again, a great idea from IKEA -- oh, where is one when I need it?) :-)

 

Tina ~ wow, you are really organized! I followed the link to your blog and I really like what you have done in your room. Cute bookshelves and the storage drawers are the same ones I have been wanting from walmart! I also followed the link to "Tink's" blog (Maria Whitehead) ~ http://gwgumby.blogspot.com/2009/04/workboxes-i-love-them.html ~ and she also has some great ideas! I love visuals!! :-)

 

THANKS!!

 

Anyone else have ideas they want to share??? :-)

[Closeacademy]

I have the 6 drawer wheeled carts that were at Aldi's around Easter. I keep all the children's daily work and curriculum in those.

 

Each child also has a large art box (one has a box for keeping stamps), inside those there is enough room for pencils, colored pencils, markers, a small stapler, a glue stick, and tape. With the dividers they can keep everything neat and organized.

 

Each day for school, I just wheel their carts over with the art boxes on top to the table where we do our work. It works great and clean up is a snap since everything goes into the cart or the art box at the end of the day.

 

On a shelf, I have binders for notebooking pages and lapbooks that we have done this year. I also have a few binders with ideas for curriculum that I am using right now. And there are pencil boxes with other supplies such as: my markers, my stockmar crayons, my colored pencils, pencils, brads & clips, and our gemstone & flowerpot manipulatives for math.

 

:001_smile:

[Sue G in PA]

That is a great price for those clear drawers at Amazon! Thanks for posting that. I get them at Walmart or Target for like $12.99...on sale! We have 3 sets of those and tried using them as workboxes this past year. It would have worked better had I been more organized. But, I also found it to be an incredible waste of space. One book in each drawer? I could fit lots of things in those drawers! I just don't have the space for workboxes. We even tried the "file folder" system for workboxes and that didn't go over well. Back to the drawing board as far as how to organize the day. Perhaps a master schedule as one PP had...hung for everyone to see.

[birchbark]

Someone posted this elsewhere on the forum, and I love it:

 

http://evlogia.typepad.com/evlogia/2010/03/beauty_in_simplicity.html

[Shelly in the Country]

For books:

 

All readers/history books are separated into groups by historical time period and "level". So, for TOG Year 1, I have a shelf for the Year 1 LG books and a shelf for the Year 1 Dialectic books. I label the shelves, too. Other types of curricula, like math texts, grammar, science, etc. are just organized by subject wherever I can find room at the moment.

 

For what my kids are currently using right now:

 

Each kid gets a shelf for their books. I also have a wall mounted magazine rack for spiral-bound notebooks. I give my eldest a separate spiral bound notebook for each subject for her daily assignments. This is kept in my teacher area so I can easily get to them for correcting her assignments. I need a better system for the subjects which require binders. I'm drowning in binders. They are space hogs.

 

For my teacher-area:

 

I have my desk in a different room from the school room due to space constraints. I have just recently set up my own bookcase/shelf unit with my TMs, software, assorted school supplies and my all-important file crate. My file crate is divided into subjects and then has folders in each subject for any conceivable type of worksheet or print-out I might need. I try to get these set up at the beginning of each school year so my kids can find their own worksheets. I always seem to be photo-copying something...