organization

[Word Nerd]

Do you use a particular system for organizing all of your books, materials, educational resources, and other items that you use for afterschooling?

 

I want to give my current system—mostly a cluttered mess of bins, folders, and bookshelves—an overhaul before school starts and would like to hear how others find a place for and manage all the stuff while still keeping it easily accessible and usable.

[LittleIzumi]

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

Oh. Serious question. Got it.

 

Nope. Unless a bookshelf & a countertop & my bedroom & the living room floor piles count.

 

:lurk5:

[Bang!Zoom!]

I use baggies, 2.5 gallon size.

 

Everything fits inside it and is labeled with the subject.

 

"math"

 

workbook, pencils, manipulatives..whatever...

 

After she works on them, it all goes back inside and moves to the "done box". She knows her core "box" can be worked in any order as long as it all gets transferred over to the "done" box. This way, she chooses what lesson she's "in the mood for".

 

After she's done and/or chooses one that I assist with, we darken the subject "done" in excel. It's a good visual to keep track of what she finishes. If she doesn't finish, it gets added to the next days workload.

 

I do not tell her when or how or what order to do the basic packs, she chooses. When it's a scheduled "time" for me to assist, I sit, call her and am ready. I do not take any flack here period. It's time.

 

So part of the schedule is formal, the other is self-willed.

[Word Nerd]

one*mom, that sounds similar to the workbox system, which I've considered trying before. I really like the baggie idea, as I have a lot of resources I want to incorporate but never seem to get around to using.

[Bang!Zoom!]

If you happen to have some of those HUGE sized baggies around the house, try it.

 

You can fit it all in one bag...books, pencils, markers, folders..whatever. No running around looking for all the "pieces".

 

ps: walmart back to school sale is on right now, you can easily afford duplicates of stuff to stash in them (notebooks, extra pencils, whatever..)

[Roadrunner]

My kids have a big bookshelf and it's organized by topic. One is for math, one for history, one for reading etc. Now all the workbooks are on the coffee table in the living room :) so it's an organized mess.

[jenbrdsly]

This is how we organize our books: http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/2011/05/28/home-library/

For math (Right Start Level D) I keep the book on the dining room table and the manipulatives on top of the china cabinet. For All About Spelling: http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/where-to-start/all-about-spelling-level-1/ I keep the board behind the china cabinet and the box of cards on top.

For once it's a good thing that I have an old china cabinet and wall paper that needs to be replaced. If anything gets nicked or scratched I really don't care. I have to be careful about keeping little pieces up high so that my two year old won't get them.

[Erika]

I have my teacher manuals and workbooks in magazine holders. I take the workbooks apart and put about ten pages in a page protector and put them in a binder, so if there are 100 pages to the workbook then I use 10 page protectors. And I just pull them out of the page protectors as I need them. I also use a plain Excel spreadsheet to log in our work. The left side has space for me to write in the date. And to the write of the date it has the subjects at the top and I just fill in the lesson or page number we completed that day. This really works well for us, since we afterschool when we can, which is not always five days a week, nor only on week days.

[chepyl]

I have an old dresser that I painted to store supplies in. On top of that, we have black canvass bas?its from Walmart. Each child has one with their school stuff in it. I can grab the basket and go with a child. We have 5-6 bookshelves around the house that I am organizing slowly. I have higher level math and grammar books together, history resources together, beginning readers, my novels, and everything else by subject.

 

I can see what I need and hide the rest.

 

And, we have a cart by the kitchen table for art supplies.

[jenbrdsly]

I have an old dresser that I painted to store supplies in. On top of that, we have black canvass bas?its from Walmart. Each child has one with their school stuff in it. I can grab the basket and go with a child. We have 5-6 bookshelves around the house that I am organizing slowly. I have higher level math and grammar books together, history resources together, beginning readers, my novels, and everything else by subject.

 

I can see what I need and hide the rest.

 

And, we have a cart by the kitchen table for art supplies.

 

I really like this idea of having each child have their own basket!

[Word Nerd]

I really like this idea of having each child have their own basket!

 

Me too! You can usually find sales on bins and organizers this time of year, too, especially in the areas of the store geared toward college students.