I’m about ready to dive into my second year of homeschooling. Last summer I spent a lot of time reading homeschooling books, poring over homeschool magazines, and listening to homeschool workshops in hopes of discovering the secret of homeschooling success. All of that “research” resulted in one very important lesson—homeschooling is an intensely personal experience.
During that time I also got all kinds of organizational tips from my homeschooling friends. Some of the ideas worked well, but some of them didn’t work at all for us. I recently made a video showing off some of our best organizational ideas. I hope it will give you some ideas for organizing your own space.
Here are some highlights from the video along with a few additional thoughts.
What Worked Well Last Year
• Our Distance Learning Notebooks
In the video, I showed off our Distance Learning notebooks. The idea is based on BJU Press’s Distance Learning Unpacking video. This method worked really well for us last year. I loved having all of my materials in one place, and it was so easy to find the information that I needed when doing my weekly lesson planning.
• My Lesson Planner
I didn’t take the time on the video to demonstrate how my favorite lesson planner works. I looked at a lot of lesson planners last year but settled on a God’s Word in Time Scripture planner sold by Rainbow Resources. It’s a fairly simple planner that includes a monthly and weekly view as well as a section to record weekly grades. I loved it so much that I bought another one for this coming homeschool year.
• My Bookshelf
My cube organizer bookshelf was perhaps my best organizational purchase last year. You can see it all set up in the video.
What We’re Doing Differently Now
• Our Math Manipulatives
I mentioned in the video that my storage method (a large plastic container) for our math manipulatives took up too much space last year. It also took a bit of time to find what we needed. So I’m using an accordion file system this year, and so far I’m loving it.
• Our School Supplies
Last year I separated like school supplies and stored them in mason jars and small plastic containers. That didn’t work well with my young children because they were continually putting things in the wrong containers. This year I plan to use more pictorial labels to help my nonreaders. But if you have any great ideas about how you organize school supplies, I would love to hear them!
We’ll be starting our homeschool year in just a couple weeks, and we’re all really excited! If you’re interested in seeing our third-grade curriculum, be sure to watch our unboxing video.