What's the most useful organizational tip you can give for home schooling?

[Ellie]

My biggest help is STAYING home!

On weeks we have daytime co op or daytime 4H, or doctors appointments, or orthodontist, etc... Things don't get done- schoolwork slides, laundry piles up, take out gets ordered, it's bad.

 

I'm trying hard to schedule dr &'other appointments at the end of the day (,the latest spot they'll give me) so that we can get our day mostly done before heading into town.

 

I cannot *like* this enough. :hurray:

[fairfarmhand]

Oh, yes...I dont schedule ANYTHING out of the house (barring sick child dr visits, and our once a month homeschool group meeting) for the hours before 12 pm. Dentist appointments, piano lessons, get togethers with friends have to happen after lunch time. In the ideal world, we should be able to do school after lunch, but it never works out that way. My routine is

 

Chores (outside and inside)

Breakfast

Dishes

School

Little bit of cleaning

Lunch

Chores/Errands/Getting together with friends, depending on the day.

My part time work.

Pre-dinner clean up

Cook Dinner

Eat dinner

Dishes

Baths/Evening time fun (I fold laundry if we watch TV in the evening, and put it away next morning)

Bedtime

 

With this schedule/routine, certain things are always the same, like school and meals. However, certain time slot activities vary depending on the day. Some days we have friend time, while others I have to work. We usually clean at particular times of day, but what we clean can be different.

[My3girls]

My number 1 tip is: treat it like a job. I get up, shower/dress, & give my house what I call the "Hotel Maid" treatment every morning. Dishwasher is unloaded, coffee pot emptied, dirty breakfast dishes loaded, counters wiped down. Beds are made, clothing picked-up, bathroom tidied, and a load of laundry started. I CANNOT begin schoolwork until my home is ready.

 

Further, I don't accept any distractions during the day: appointments, errands, social visits, and any other out-of-the-house stuff is done after our school day is complete. School work is all pretty much do-the-next-thing and requires little planning, BUT I do keep a cheap paper planner for each child to list specific work to be done by week, filled-out by Sunday evening for the following week. That's it. Keep it simple and it all gets done. The more complicated your plans, the less likely they are to be carried out on a long-term basis.

 

I decided this morning that I am doing exactly this.  My work day will be 8-5 with an hour for lunch, and I WILL get my house under control.  Thanks for the post!

[stutterfish]

Run and hide and hope nobody realises you're supposed to be in charge..?

[T'smom]

I bought these bins. http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Options-Project-Boxes-Pack/dp/B00S8IYCBO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453403447&sr=8-2&keywords=Scrapbooking+bins+creative+options

 

I got them MUCH cheaper at Costco. Each subject has all the stuff needed in it's own box. The bins are big enough to have notebooks, books, workbooks, pencils, manipulatives (spelling tiles, game cards for RightStart, coins, dry erase boards/markers, etc). The kids have their own box for subjects that they do individually, but there is only one box per subject we do together (dd has a math box, ds has a math box, but there is only one bible box) my teacher stuff is in the same box. I love this because I can say "go get your math box" and we have everything we need to do the subject wherever we want to be. In the winter, this isn't as big of a deal, but in the spring and fall, I try to be outside as much as possible. We also go to the basement sometimes so the youngest can run/jump. We also spend a lot of time camping and I can grab the boxes for the subjects we need while we're gone. That probably sounds silly, but my kids do much better if we don't take too much time off of doing school and we are at a campground for most of the summer.

 

I loved those boxes so much that I bought a bunch more and use them for many other things! They are incredibly versatile!

[El...]

I'm taking notes. 

[FloridaLisa]

• Make 2 weeks' worth of file folders for each child filled with their independent work: math worksheets, Explode the Code, Logic workbooks, handwriting, spelling. 
•  
• Use different cuts for different days OR different cuts for each child. 
•  
• Fill the 2 weeks on Sunday night. If something is missed, just put it into the next day's folder.
•  
• Cut the binders off of workbooks so the sheets can be easily filed.
•  
• After checking independent seat work, have the kids file it in their own accordion folder.
•  
• Use one of these portable file boxes to keep teacher guides, answer keys, red pens, sticky notes, etc in for correcting. This is for grading math and writing and science tests that may take longer than the quick check for lower level seat work. 

Forgive the formatting. It's easier to read double-spaced but I can't make it do that!

[happypamama]

Also, overplanning.  I don't plan by the exact day, but I plan each lesson individually.  I just don't know ahead of time if that lesson will happen on Monday as I thought, or if Life Will Happen on Monday, and that lesson will happen on Tuesday instead.  I can't possibly know in the spring what will happen in the fall!  Last summer, I thought we'd have off for all of June, and then we'd do summer work (art and music) in an intensive summer term in July.  So I planned it out that way.  It was *awesome* for one week.

 

And then we dismantled half of my house, including my schoolroom, to build a music room, rip out a set of stairs, and paint/pretty up my schoolroom and kitchen.  It was four weeks of working like dogs, and piles of supplies and stuff everywhere.  And it was 150% worth it because we have some really nice, useful, and comfortable spaces now.  So we didn't get to study five artists and five composers; we got to study one of each.  But because I overplanned, we did get the one of each, and now we have it ready to go anytime we want to pick that back up.  Planning more than I know we will get to lets me feel okay and not panicky or worried when we don't get to everything.

[Tiramisu]

I use color differently.

 

I create a black and white schedule, a chart with days of the week along the top and subjects down the left side. Each day when we start I choose a color based on my mood. It could be any color and be bright, pastel, or muted. I color the square for the day of the week and each subject gets colored in with that color after it's finished.

 

On good days its one nice column of color.  A good week will have all perfectly colored columns, like a rainbow.

 

If things don't get done on a given day, they are left blank.

 

Then the next day I start with a new color, but it has to be of the same family (bright, pastel, or muted). When things from the previous day's work get finished they get the color of the new day.

 

So at the end of a bad week, my schedule will look like a mosaic.

 

With this method I'm able to tell VISUALLY what day we did what work, and which days were more productive and less productive.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Tiramisu

[Rosyl]

We mostly use composition books and one subject spiral notebooks, the ones that go on sale in August for ten cents. A lost notebook or two in the morning was our number one obstacle to starting school on time, so I needed a quick fix. (School books tend to be put back in the bookshelf...I just needed to corral the notebooks).

 

This year I bought each child a plastic expanding file with 7 pockets to hold notebooks. Each pocket stores one notebook per subject (or loose papers such as cardstock for nature journals, math worksheets stapled for the week, copywork and map print outs). At the end of the week, each child picks out favorite pages from their schoolwork expanding file and slides them into page protectors in a binder. This has also helped with my prep for the next week too because I can just print and stash any necessary print outs and papers together with their spiral notebooks.

 

This is an excellent idea!!!!!!!  This lost notebook problem has been a bone of contention in my house.  Thanks!