Homeschool Organization Project (with a FREE printable)

I could not drag myself out of bed when my alarm went off this morning. Instead I snoozed it for an hour (just being real here). But I have an excuse; my throat is soar and scratchy, my sinuses are clogged, and my eyes are twice as heavy as normal- I've got a cold. I've had a cold since Tuesday evening, so I've been laying low this week at home with the kids. All of this time to sit and suffer gave me a chance to update my homeschooling "system" which has been in desperate need of an overhaul.

I spent most of August trying to find a lesson planning system that worked with our preschool curriculum and my style. In vain I searched planners online and in stores. I tried an app on my tablet. None of them were what I was looking for. So I even tried making my own. When I realized how much I hated all of those, I took a normal day planner and tried to turn that into lesson plans. That worked for a while until I realized I just did not need that much "planning".

Now, my number 1 planning tool is a highlighter.

I use a highlighter to mark the activities I want to do each day directly in the teacher's book (and I might also color a supply or preparation step I need to set up ahead of time). It seems so simple, too simple, and yet this is all I need to propel me through the day's work.

Here is an example from my teacher's book; so simple it's almost silly

Now that I have that basic step accomplished, I wanted to better organize my Paper. This includes filing Evan's completed work, my notes, attendance records (more for me to see how much- or how little- school we are doing each month), visual aids, really any papers associated with our homeschool lessons. Today I pulled all of these together in a 3-ring binder and in an accordion file organizer.

I have all of the visual aids from our curriculum (you can see which curriculum we're using here, and I do promise to talk about it soon, we love it!) stored by theme in this filer. Now I only need to open to the relevant category- say letters- and select the poster/visual aid I want.

Since I sent the "official" planners packing and am now using the highlighting method, I needed a simple monthly calendar to record our attendance and lessons completed so I can track where we are. I quickly sat down and created my own calendar with just enough space to jot down the lesson number completed each day.

Because I love FREE printables, I want to make this calendar available to you! (I spent two days researching how to attach this and so I hope the link below works, here goes nothing)

You may print as many copies as you wish for personal use, but if you share it, please link directly to my site.

Two Per Page Monthly School Attendance Tracker

Here is a quick glance at the remaining pages of my teacher binder:

Upcoming Work Pages

Here I've already selected the pages from Evan's student book that I wish to use in upcoming lessons. I'll probably do a few days to a week ahead for this.

Daily Visual Aids

This tab has the current, daily used visual aids kept in page protectors.

Completed work

The last tab houses Evan's completed worksheets.  I at least want to keep some of the work for the year to compare how far he has progressed as a gauge for me as his teacher.

And with those two filing tools, I feel more organized and better able to prepare our lessons. Planning and organizing is certainly half of the battle, I think, for homeschool mom's everywhere! I hope this inspires you to tackle some of your paper and find the perfect system for you. I'd love to hear your ideas- please feel free to comment or link to your blog below.