How I Organize

Melissa over @ Home Grown Families is hosting a back-to-school check-up theme. Last week was about the school room. This week it is about organization.

Organization.? Who said organization? I think that is one area where we homeschoolers either excel at , or are just trying to keep things together. I would consider myself to be part of the second category but I thought I would share what I do to keep myself a float of disasters. I am not super particular about things, so  something general works for me. As long as I know where things go and I can point it to my kids and (hubby , of course) I am good.

I use baskets and bins a lot. I re-purpose a lot.:These are my main 2 tools in my organization.

My next 2 are the Rubbermaid (or whatever brand you like) organization drawers, and bookshelvess, of course. I was able to get 2 of them on sale, and blessed to have been given one. Yesterday, as we were in the States, I stopped at Walmart and got another one , this time one of the smaller ones (the blue one you can see in the picture above), that I have been wanting but thought to be to expensive here in Canada (like everything else - I do love Canada!)

Those are my secrets for school supplies, books and everything else that needs to have a place.

How about organization as far as planning goes? Now, that, I need to work on more. This is my second year of actual planning. I am learning along the way.

One thing I learned last year was that: It is not good to not know where things are ,or not be ready for those kiddos with  the work that need to be done in hand, or even knowing for sure the next  plan of action.

So, for this year I have decided that I will not be caught  unprepared in the morning (at least as much as can be helped - given my spontaneous personality and aversion to behind prepared).

So how will I do that? I made schedules. Each boy has a daily schedule detailing what comes next, at least all the required thing. I have a schedule detailing what happens when with which child.

My struggle this year is to actually go over the lessons before hand and figuring out what I need to have handy (if need be); that is a need this year because we are using TOG, which is a unit study type of curriculum and I am also using a teacher directed curriculum for our Bible time.

This morning was our back to school day, and I am happy it went mostly well, due to my "being prepared", no "ok let me check", "just a minute I need to get this", "Oh no! I did not print this", etc....

How I plan to keep it up? Every night I am going to have to go over what is to be done the next day and make sure everything is ready. Simple but not so easily done. I am going to have to ask the Lord to give me the grace for that. Here comes another reason why I need to be up earlier: I can always finish up putting things together in the morning before it's time to get school going.

Well here is a general rundown of how I organize our homeschool. Let me know what you think.