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If you homeschool CM style with multiple kids


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I am starting a mostly dedicated CM homeschool year. I am using a good bit of SCM and incorporating them all with the same time period. Two kids will share one set of independent reading books.

 

When I was homeschooling more traditionally or classically, we used spiral notebooks for each subject and each kid had their free reads in their space. I'm spinning my wheels this year with organizing. We have a family book grouping and then two different book groupings, two kids per grouping.

 

How do you organize this? Baskets, just on the shelf? I'm probably overthinking this but I really want the days to flow and me not have to be interrupted a million times to find books for individuals.

 

Also, for narrations and the like, I won't daily have a written narration for each subject. I'm considering each kid having a binder with dividers. Perhaps, a composition notebook for each sibject would work too. Just spinning my wheels. I know there isn't any wrong answer. With school sales among us, I just want to make wise choices.

 

Spiral notebooks made sense when we were just answering problems and writing spelling words. I'll still use spiral for math and a spiral sketch pad for their nature journal. A binder for their book of centuries..

Advice or just telling me what works best for you is very welcome!

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We have a small book basket for family read aloud paperbacks we want to read through before year's end on an end table beside the sofa in the living room. The hymnals, a Bible, a poetry anthology, a book of short stories, and family devotional materials are stacked right beside it. This makes read alouds and doing Bible related activities more likely to get done consistently since we don't have to go get up to grab them when we are winding down in the evening. The 1-2 independent read books my kids have going at any one time are kept on their bedside table. Easy to grab during mid day downtime or at bedtime. I keep our current poetry book, current spine and related books for history, a science related book, a story about our current composer or artist, and a book of artist prints on a shelf in arm's reach right beside the chair I sit in during our school time. I have a CD player in the school area to play composer music and folksongs. I keep only 5 or so CDs out beside the player that focus on the composer, the songs, the hymns or audiobooks we are studying. The CDs get changed each term. We start the day with either a hymn, a folksong, or listening to a composer piece on CD or youtube. I use thick binders for their MEP math lessons, kept on the shelf with the other school materials. I pull out each day's worksheet and send them off to their nearby desks after I present their MEP lesson. There is a bin of math manipulatives nearby to use as needed. I hope to someday purchase SCMs artist portfolios, but until then I display our weekly artist print from my collection of cheap used artist books on an easel in the school area. The kids keep their copywork books, homemade by me memory work spiral notebook, current McGuffey reader, a spiral notebook for random writing or drawing or scrap paper, their spelling dictation study passages, and a spiral notebook for spelling dictation in a stack near their desks. One child should transisition to written narrations mid year and I plan to use a spiral notebook for that. I refer to our wall maps or globe, also in arm's reach of our small school area, as geography things come up in almost everything we read. We have a small chalkboard and dry erase board that help with teaching new math or LA concepts. This is what is currently working well for our CM inspired education.

 

As for what isn't working: we are deficient in the nature study and Shakespeare study, but will get up to speed one of these days. We also need to work on including handicrafts into our routine more consistently. I don't keep a timeline or Book of Centuries, but need to do so.

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My children each have a shelf for their own books.  A Math basket is near the table and contains all current Math books.  A basket for current Morning Time books and a basket for Bibles, devotional books and the evening read aloud book.

 

Baskets for the children's books would be too messy for our house.  I have to enforce keeping their shelves neat.  Perhaps the older ones could have a shelf together for combined books, and the same for the youngers?

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Two of my kids are CM-ish/WTM homeschoolers, but I'm not the most organized person.  I have 5 kids, so if I'm not careful, there's books everywhere (well, there is anyway).  

 

So...each kid has a plastic bin.  I let them decorate the outside of the bin with stickers, etc.  The bins contain every schoolbook for the year - except library books.  I also have a read-aloud/independent reading basket.  All of the current fiction read-alouds and fiction they are reading on their own go in the basket, which is on the kitchen island.  When we finish the book, I take it out of the basket and put it back in the bookcase.  This also helps me know how much we have left as the year goes on.  

 

For example, my 10 year-old's bin has:

 

Beast Academy guides + workbooks

MCT's Grammar Island series

a cursive workbook

Wordsmith Apprentice

Draw Write Now workbook

2 Dover wildlife coloring books

a miniature Audubon's Birds of America

The Story of the Orchestra

Usborne Impressionist Painting cards

a puzzle book and a Brainquest workbook

SOTW 3

A Child's Geography

9 Read-alouds

4 Readers (the rest we are getting from the library)

 

**Books that are shared between the 10 yro and 7 yro go in the older kid's bin.

 

The bin sounds huge, but it's actually a medium-sized bin.  I can easily carry it over to the table when it's time to work or just pull stuff out.  When we start a new read-aloud or reader, I transfer them to the book basket.

 

For years, we had a bookshelf for each kid, but that always backfired for some reason.  The kids would stick weird stuff on the shelf...papers would somehow end up hiding there....I couldn't see the books' covers, so I would forget to do something...  When they were really little, I put *everything* in their backpacks (back before they had 13 readers a piece - Lol).  We just brought their backpacks to the table each day and pulled stuff out.

 

Anyway, good luck!!   ;)

 

Edited to add: we'll be getting all of our science read-alouds from the library, so those will end up on the kitchen island, too.

 

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I don't keep a timeline or Book of Centuries, but need to do so.

 

Two of mine did a Book of Centuries.  There's a free printable one on SCM's website (but you guys probably already know that).  There's so much stuff to do, it's hard to do *everything*!   :tongue_smilie:  Only so many hours in the day...

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Two of mine did a Book of Centuries. There's a free printable one on SCM's website (but you guys probably already know that). There's so much stuff to do, it's hard to do *everything*! :tongue_smilie: Only so many hours in the day...

Thanks, I actually made my own blank BOC in a folder with fastener brackets. I based it on SCM's free downloadable one. It's the only folder that sat on the bookshelf within arm's reach of everything else that remained untouched for the entire school year! I dusted the cover recently and set it on the same shelf with my teaching materials for the upcoming school year. Maybe this will be the year there will be a case of paper meets written words in regards to that folder, lol.

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Our school books stay on a designated shelf unless we are taking them out with us. Then they are packed in backpacks.

 

I have made some spiral-bound notebooks for some things like nature study and our geography books.  These have a special organization to them that make just a plain notebook less usable.

 

For most written narrations, I think a plain spiral notebook is just fine.  I like spiral better than binders b/c my kids tend to lose papers out of binders.  Binders are nice though b/c you can use dividers and use one binder for all written work.  One middle of the road solution is to make notebooks with binder-rings.  You can open them to make changes, but it isn't as easy as a binder so the kids are less likely to open and lose things.

 

You can organize a spiral notebook similarly to the bullet journal as well.  My nature journal has a DIY table of contents, for example, to make it simple for the kids to organize without taking away the flexibility.

 

 

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I have made some spiral-bound notebooks for some things like nature study and our geography books.  These have a special organization to them that make just a plain notebook less usable.

 

 

If you have time, I hope you could expand on that!  How are these notebooks set up, etc...or even if you have a link to something similar.

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If you have time, I hope you could expand on that!  How are these notebooks set up, etc...or even if you have a link to something similar.

 

 

I have them up at lulu.com  You can click on preview to see samples.  I also have them at gumroad for download.

 

Geography w/ Haliburton  at lulu  and at gumroad

 

Nature Journal  at lulu  and at gumroad

 

Math Journal  at lulu  and at gumroad  (This one is free on gumroad, but I think you have to type in 0 for the price.)

 

 

Book of Centuries is something I print off...I think from Simply Charlotte Mason, irc.  Book of Commonplace is just a nice journal, something hardback or leatherbound.  Staples sometimes has really good deals.  Those two things are kept on the shelf and not toted around like the rest. 

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All schoolbooks are on one shelf. And I've simplified back to ONE notebook for most things - math notes, written narrations, assignment list, writing their answers for Spanish, etc. - rather bullet journal-esq..

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I think I have settled on 3 baskets for this terms books. Family/Grade 5/Grade 7.

 

I purchased compositions because I don't want to worry with loose papers. I will combine Geography maps into back of their Book of Centuries binders. Also purchased nice sketch diaries for nature journal.

 

We will just orally narrate hymn, music, picture and poetry studies. Atleast this first term.

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Target has some nice wire bins with dividers, kind of like the desk apprentices, but smaller and only about $15 each. They hold a full binder plus several books, so each of the three older children has one for his or her specific, current stuff, and they live at each child's workspace. Then I have a shelf that holds shared books like the Kingfisher Encyclopedias, plus reference books. And I have a long narrow crate that holds things we don't use often, or stuff that will be coming up. I have our summer group work in my first grader's wire bin for now, but I need to get another of those from Target for the group work books. Otherwise, I just keep them in a plastic mesh basket from The Container Store. I can take some pics if you want.

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Target has some nice wire bins with dividers, kind of like the desk apprentices, but smaller and only about $15 each. 

 

I need to get something like this for our table.  I want to keep a bin with all of our references in one spot - right where they are working.  I plan to have our Collegiate Atlas of the World, Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, a thesaurus, The English Handbook and Writers Inc on the table for them. 

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