Homeschool Organization Ideas for the Artful Stacker
Looking for homeschool organization ideas, yet feeling that organizational skills aren’t in your wheelhouse? I get it. Read on for some ideas that will help you with homeschool organization even if it doesn’t come naturally to you!
Homeschool Organization Ideas
One of those big homeschool myths is that we homeschool moms are oh-so-organized. Some are, and some aren’t, depending on personality and preference. I am not one of the naturally organized people in our world, so getting (and keeping) my homeschool in order can be a real challenge. I probably know which pile of stuff next week’s textbook is in, but to everyone else the bookshelf looks like a mess; and that’s probably not the example I want to set for my kids. Here are my experiences along with a few tips for organizing your homeschool, especially for the organizationally challenged mom.
Homeschool Organization Ideas for the Artful Stacker
Fortunately, I do love lesson planning! That means I’ve got no problem sitting down with a notebook and calendar and planning out the coursework over an entire school year. I also enjoy transferring that information to a homeschool planning program, either online or using software and spreadsheets; so all that hard work is saved and stored and can be pulled up at any time.
- Tip #1 – Decide what you need to accomplish in your homeschool and make a plan for getting it done. Whether you use pencil and paper, online tools, or a combination, the first step is knowing what you’ve got to work with and what needs to be done. This can be as simple as “one chapter of the history curriculum each week for 36 weeks” or can be detailed down to specific page numbers, whatever level you are comfortable with. If lesson planning and record-keeping is not your forte, simpler is probably better!
Now that all the coursework has been planned and organized, the real challenge begins. Keeping all the books and school supplies organized; and staying on top of the grading and record-keeping. Here’s where those online planners really come in handy for me. I find it more manageable to check off assignments and plug in grades in one program (and let the planner do the math when it’s time to calculate an average and issue a report card!) than to hand-write in a teacher’s log. My personal goal is to get it updated once a week. In a perfect world, I do it every school day, but that doesn’t usually work in my real world. I often get way behind my once-a-week goal too, but that is what I strive for.
- Tip #2 – Check your student’s work regularly and often. If you are keeping grades, do your best to write down or enter their scores on assignments and tests as they do them. Tick it off the list when it’s done, or better yet, let your kids tick off their own lists.
- Tip #3 – Make use of routines and deadlines to stay on top of things. For us, Tuesday is library day, because that’s the day we almost always go into town at least twice anyway. Since that’s the day I stop at the library, all our library books are due on Tuesdays. It’s part of the routine now, and I very seldom have overdue books any more. I’ve been less successful with making sure grading gets done every Friday afternoon, but it does help! Many of us that aren’t naturally organized also forget where we put that form we need to fill out until the day it’s due; or that there even was a deadline for signing up for that co-op class or field trip. Personally, I work harder and faster as I see a deadline approaching (or passing… can I get an Amen?) so writing deadlines and due dates on my calendar and on my planner and anywhere else it might be relevant helps me see what’s coming up, and hopefully adjust accordingly.
We don’t have a classroom, so our books need to be kept in the places where we do our work. I have a section of my bookshelf and a crate beside my desk where I keep my answer keys, teacher’s editions, and other resources.
My kids each have a desk in their room and are expected to keep their schoolbooks in or on their desk, even if they cart books to other places in the house when they are using them. Do books get left on the dining room table or on precarious stacks beside my desk? Yes, pretty much every day, but since there IS a designated place for it, we can put it away quickly.
- Tip #4 – Make it easy to get your books when you need them. Wall-to-wall bookshelves with all the titles arranged alphabetically or by Dewey decimal system is nice, but will it stay organized and will you be able to find the book you need quickly? Keep only the books you are currently using out, and keep them wherever is handiest for whoever is using them. Store the textbooks you already have for some future time out of the way. (I need to do a better job of this one!)
- Tip #5 – Train kids to take responsibility for their own schoolwork and supplies. Little ones can learn where to put their science reader when they are done with it, and to put the date on their workbook pages as they finish. As they get older, they can be responsible for keeping all their school things together and organized, maybe even for checking their own work against the solutions manual on occasion.
During the summer, we are in the transition of putting away the schoolbooks we are finished with and setting up for the next school year. What do we keep and for how long? When my kids were little, of course I wanted to keep every sweet art project they put together, and every cute story they wrote. Obviously that became cumbersome, and eventually I had to admit that we weren’t likely to look at those keepsakes very often.
A homeschooling friend once shared her system – at the end of each school year, she got a clean cardboard pizza box for each kid, and chose only the papers that would fit in the box to keep. The edge of the box could be labelled with the name, grade, and year, and they stacked very neatly in her attic or whatever. I’ve been using magazine boxes to do basically the same thing.
To sum up, keep only the most important highlights once you’ve finished your school year. In general, the records are more important than the actual books once they get to high school.
- Tip #6 – Don’t feel guilty about chucking the completed workbooks once they are completed. Limit how much schoolwork you keep from previous years. Consider taking a photo of your student with their kitchen table sized styrofoam model of the solar system and then get rid of the styrofoam.
Are you naturally organized or are you an “artful stacker” like me? What are your best tips for keeping your homeschool organized? Share your homeschool organization ideas in the comments!
- Counting Holiday Homeschool Days - December 22, 2023
- Homeschool Graduation – A Traditional and Personal Celebration - May 16, 2023
- Choosing a Bible Verse to Guide Your Homeschool - April 29, 2021