Keeping It All Together

Jenny/ April 19, 2018/ Family Life

 

Organization, that’s a word that can shivers down the stiffest spine.  Just keeping your finances organized along with all the other household records is enough to put you over the edge, but add in homeschooling and you might feel like you would pull your hair out, lol.  And honestly I’m not the best at organization anyway, so I have to have lots of helpers.

 

One thing that I’ve found that is super helpful are these marvelous little totes with snap-on lids.  They are clear & you can write a label on them if you have multiple children or want to organize morning & afternoon lessons/different day lessons ect…  Right now I have both my sons’ curriculum in one tote and it works great!  We have our phonics, reading, science, math & any history we are currently working on.  I also keep my planner and record the days lessons as they are completed, which makes it so much easier on me than trying to remember all we’ve done by the end of the day.  I actually leave it on my mid-counter through the week and then move it to my bedroom out of sight when schoolwork is done for the week.  For some reason this helps me.  I also have one with my Bible, journaling, books I’m currently reading and cards I’m planning on sending ect…

 

Now, speaking of planners, I’ve used a variety but the ones that work the best for me are specifically designed for homeschooling.  The one we’re currently using now is downloadable & printable so I can print off more copies as needed.  It has slots for each day of the week and I simply record all our activities.  However, I have ordered the Well Planned Gal Homeschool Planner and I’m really looking forward to trying it.  Its supposed to organize all your planners into just one which would be super helpful to me, since I’m always writing notes to myself on random bits of paper and then throwing them away…sigh…Its also spiral which for some reason I just love, lol.

 

I also have a routine that keeps me semi-on track.  We start our day with Bible reading, then phonics & math.  I figure if all else fails we will get the main subjects done first then take a break.  I’m actually doing a phonics program called Foundation Phonics which neatly combines our Bible study & phonics into one package! I absolutely love that!  Actually the math, science & history program we’re using also have God’s word as their foundation so we get to discuss that along with every subject!  Since I consider that the most important foundation we can give our children this makes me super happy!

 

We don’t technically have a “school room” but we mainly do our schoolwork in the kitchen/computer room where we also have a large dry erase board which the boys love!  I also try to keep learning books together on a special bookcase and they tend to grab these to look at during naptime wind-down.

 

So, that’s how I keep it all together!  I’m certainly not perfect and neither is my system but its getting better.  I keep tweaking it and experimenting to see what works for our family.  What about you?  Do you organize or just leave it all to chance?