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For this past year, I have been homeschooling my oldest daughter for Preschool. We have been doing letter and number lessons, with a lot of reading and play time. Along with my regular sharing of paper crafting projects, I will be sharing our homeschooling adventure.
We recently enrolled our daughter in a local enrichment school program that offers support to homeschooling families. When this next school year starts, she will attend the Kindergarten enrichment class once a week and we will homeschool the other four days. The classes allow students to play and work with other kids their age.
A big perk of this program is that they help provide curriculum to the families. We get to pick from their subject offerings what we want to use for the year. Many of the books will be loaned to us for the school year (like a library book loan, only longer), and consumable items, like student workbooks and some teacher guides, will be ours to keep. We do not have to pick something for every subject if we don’t want to. Any curriculum options we want to use that they do not offer we simply get on our own.
Since we will have a stack of books to keep track of and school dates to remember, I have been working on making a Homeschool Documentation binder and a Homeschool Planner binder. I’m hoping that if I get this all put together now, it will help come summer time when we get the curriculum. Then when August rolls around, we will be set to go!
I searched around on Pinterest to see how other homeschool moms keep their homeschool papers organized. I was inspired by a few posts (listed below) and decided to make my own pages to fit our needs.
http://www.learningwellcommunity.com/master-homeschool-binder/
http://www.learningwellcommunity.com/useful-homeschool-lesson-planner/
https://simplycharlottemason.com/build-your-own-curriculum/
Here is a look at how I am setting up our binders.
Homeschool Documentation Binder
Supplies:
This binder will be home to all things administrative – school forms, state requirements, attendance records, medical records, etc. Ours is pretty empty at the moment, only the registration forms are in there now. I haven’t even labeled the dividers yet, but I made a note of how I plan to label and use the sections. My sections are greatly influenced by the blog posts listed above.
Section 1: Yearly Plans
At the start of the year, I will add a page with brief descriptions of what we plan to do over the course of the year. At the end of the year, I will do a new page (in more detail) of what we actually covered, including any activities and other notes of the year.
Section 2: State Forms
This section will hold copies of our letter of intent and registration forms, as well as our state’s homeschool requirements. Attendance sheets will be added in at the end of the year (taken from the Planner binder when done).
Section 3: Medical Records
Here is where we will keep track of all doctor visits and updated vaccination charts.
Section 4: Curriculum Info
Since we will be getting much of our curriculum loaned to us through the enrichment program, I want to keep track of what items are from them and what we purchased on our own. If we happen to switch curriculum at some point, it will get noted here.
Section 5: Book Lists
This section will hold blank lists for us to fill out with what we have read and our favorites, as well as any premade lists of good books to read.
Section 6: Homeschool Helps
When I come across any great homeschool articles/blog posts that I want to reference again and again, they will get placed in this section.
Section 7: Activities
Anything related to field trips, sports activities, community service projects, and the like, will get documented here.
Section 8: Notes
The final section is a place to write down any ideas for special unit studies, plans for the next year, etc.
Homeschool Planner
Supplies:
This binder will be our day-to-day binder to see what is planned and document what we actually do. Again, ours is pretty empty at the moment, but I have some planning pages made and printed off (with more in the works). I also don’t have the sections labeled yet but noted how I am planning on labeling them. I really liked how Alicia, from Learning Well Community (a couple of her posts are linked above), simplified her planner to three sections, one of which is a “homeschool journal” to write down what they actually did each school day. My planner binder mimics hers, with a couple more sections added in.
Section 1: Planning Section
This section will hold our year at a glance calendar, plans for the year, and other planning sheets. I started filling out our Plans for the Year page based on the curriculum we plan to order from the enrichment program. I will fill out the rest soon, as we decide on what to cover in the other areas.
Section 2: Term Section
Having been inspired by the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling, I plan to break down the yearly plans into 6-week terms. I have some pages in the works for writing down an overview of each term and listing the books needed for each. Our weekly schedules will also be in this section.
Section 3: Records Section
This section will be filled with a lot of loose leaf paper to write down what we do each day (whether it’s exactly like what was planned or not). I will also have an attendance tracker in this section, which will get moved to the Documentation Binder at the end of the year.
Section 4: Cloverleaf
Since we are a part of the enrichment program, I want to have a section to know what days our daughter has class and to keep track of any work she needs to do for those classes.
Section 5: Notes
Similar to my other binder, this is a spot to write down any ideas relating to our homeschooling.
That is what I have worked out so far in getting our homeschool organized. My hope is that by starting out organized we will stay on track even when life and work get crazy. Are you a homeschool parent? Share with me what you do to stay organized. I’d love to hear from you.
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