Organizing My Homeschool Year- Part 2

Last time I shared how I organized my lesson plans and our storage area.  Today I will share how I have organized my desk, my sons' desks, and my teacher manuals.

First up is my desk!  This is a big dumping ground in our school area.  It can become quite cluttered by the end of a busy school week.  So with much thought and planning I have come up with some cute and easy ways to keep it fairly organized.

These paper trays are used for my boys to hand in their work when its completed.
I then grade it and put it back into a folder with the rest of their competed work.
You will notice that one is green (Elijah's) and the other is blue (Noah).

I put my main writing utensils in canning jars to add some cuteness.  One jar holds pens
and scissors, the one next to that is sharpies, then the Flair Felt Tip pens, and finally the jar in front
holds my pencils.

Those two items right there help keep my desk pretty clear, but I also have a Thirty-One Gifts hanging file on my wall next to the desk.  That just helps with extra papers that I need to file away or that I have printed off but do not need right away.  In the other pocket I keep my Letter of the Week binder for Zach's preschool.

Next up are my desk drawers.  These have gone through multiple revisions over the years, but I think I finally have a system down for keeping them organized, especially with getting my most used writing utensils up on top of the desk.

Drawer 1:  Dry erase markers, post it notes, a pair of little scissors, push pins, brads, thumb tacks, extra staples, extra paper clips, post it sticky tabs and some white out.  I keep the push pins, brads and thumb tacks in old make up containers.  The drawer organizers are from the Container Store and they are the Medium Sliding Drawer Organizer.

Drawer 1:  In the second part of the plastic tray I have some big dry erase markers, highlighters, and some Vis-A Vis wet erase markers.

Drawer 2:  Rubberbands, batteries, sticky tack, staple remover, binder rings, binder clips, electrical tape, hole punches, circle punch, sticker maker, and measuring tape.

Drawer 3:  3 hole punch, extra pencils, tape, chalk, string, index cards, velcro dots, and blank cards.

Drawer 4:  Printer paper, sticky labels, and card stock.

Drawer 5:  Envelopes, extra mouse, computer programs, and some more note cards.

Here is an overview picture of my desk.

The desk is the Linnmon table top from Ikea and the drawers are the Alex Drawers.

Now lets look at my boys' desks.  Here is an overview picture of them first.  They also each have a Linnmon table top and the Alex drawers from Ikea.

Noah's desk.  We do not have an overhead light in this room so each
boy has a floor lamp by their desk.

Elijah's Desk,  this picture was taken before he had his desk
completely set up.  His desktop organizer sits on the far right side of his desk.

This is a small desk top organizer from The Container Store, along the side is what's in each drawer.
Under the plastic lid on top Elijah keeps his dry erase marker and eraser, drawer one is markers, drawer 2 are his pencils and erasers, drawer 3 are colored pencils and crayons.

Drawer 1 has his assignment folder and calendar notebook, drawer 2 is Bible, drawer 3 is Science,
drawer 4 is Math, and drawer 5 is Language Arts.

Noah has the same desk top organizer, under his plastic lid are scissors and erasers.  Drawer 1 is crayons, drawer 2 has markers, and drawer 3 holds his colored pencils.

On Noah's desk drawers I put picture and word labels to help him know what was in each drawer.
Drawer 1 has his calendar notebook, pencils and some more erasers, drawer 2 is Bible and Handwriting, drawer 3 is Math and Science, drawer 4 is Reading, and then in his last drawer he just has some extra notebooks and other things.

Since Zach does not have an actual desk, but instead work boxes, his area is a bit more challenging.  He is also a very opinionated little boy!  Last year he had a pencil box that we used to keep all of his supplies in, that worked well.  This year I was planning on using the same thing, but then I went to a Thirty-One Gifts party and ordered a cute froggy basket.  I thought that he would love using that to keep his supplies in, yeah not the case!  Then I was at Target and found a little caddy that I thought he would like better than the froggy basket, yeah he still wasn't going along with it.  His pencil box was not big enough to hold everything I wanted it to hold, which is why he needed something different.  He has finally given in to the small caddy, and we use that to house his crayons, markers, scissors, and pencils.  Right now he keeps his dry erase items in the froggy basket, and not sure what he is using the pencil box for, but its still out!

These are his workboxes, they are the Trofast shelves from Ikea.  I printed the dinosaur labels from
1+1+1=1.  We also keep our globe here for easy access.  His calendar notebook is also kept on top.

Now finally for my teachers manuals.  I keep those in our expedit shelf unit from Ikea.

Our homeschool binder is kept here.  In the blue bin on the left are teachers manuals for Noah and some extra books for Zach.  In the blue bin on the right are teachers manuals for Elijah and our all together subjects.  I got these bins from Lakeshore Learning and they are wonderful for holding bigger items, like my teachers manuals.  

 I love using magazine holders for keeping like items together on a book shelf.   In the ones below I have extra workbooks, lap books, and tot books.  These are the Flyt magazine files from Ikea, they are made of cardboard but have held up amazingly, and the price is unbeatable!

 I had some items in big bins that you couldn't see inside of.  I found that my boys were not getting into those bins because they didn't know what was in them.  My problem though was that I couldn't figure out a way to put a label on them.  I had these labels that were stickers, so I made some word labels and added pictures for the bins that just had one item in them.

This is the bottom of our Expedit.  These bins also came from Ikea, they are the Drona bins and are super big!  In the first bin I put our snap circuits, we have the regular one and also a snap circuits rover.  In the second bin are some busy bags.  The third one are puzzles, if you notice they are all in ziplock bags, I gave up on boxes!  In the last bin our the stacking pegs, we have alphabet ones and the just some shapes.  

  I hope you found this tour helpful, sorry it got so long!  I love to organize and find it makes our homeschool room feel so much more useful when things are organized.  How do you keep your homeschool items organized?

Organizing My Homeschool Year- Part 1

I have been thinking a lot lately about organization.  I personally love to organize and I love having everything in its proper place.  I have a label maker, and most everything in our school area is labeled.

I thought I would take today and share a little bit about how I organize our space.  We are blessed to have a home that has an extra room in our finished basement.  We use that as our school room, it also has an attached storage room that we use for extra storage for our school items.  Our room is approximately 13 x 13, and the storage room is about 13 x 8.5.

I'll first share how I organize my planner. I created my own homeschool lesson planner this year, which is free to you to download if you would like!  Just follow this link!  I printed it all off, hole punched it and placed it in a 1" three ring binder.  It is divided into four main sections.  The first section is my lesson plans.

Next is the lesson schedules I created.  I have our read aloud schedule, Letter of the Week Schedule, What's in the Bible videos and what history lesson they correspond with, etc.

In the next section is my Calendar and Attendance trackers.  I also have our Year in Review page in this section.

My last section is extra records that I am keeping this year.  I have a Book Log, Field Trip log, and a course of study for each child.

Next, I'll share how I organize the Letter of the Week curriculum that we are using for Zach.  First I created a hanging file folder for each letter of the alphabet and for each literature unit we will be using.  I then put them in my cute Thirty-One Gifts fold n file.  I just printed off the first 12 weeks of school right now.  So all of those are filed into the appropriate folder.  I also went ahead and laminated the things that I wanted laminated.

After that I printed off the lesson plans and hole punched them and put them in a 1/2" three ring binder.  I created two sections in this binder one is the lesson plans and one is extra resource pages that go along with the Letter of the Week curriculum.

Next up, is my little storage room off the school room.  This summer it went through a major overhaul.  We use this area to store our craft supplies, curriculum that we aren't currently using and our records.  This year I also moved my sons' desks into this little room.  It serves as a great barrier from our main room, while still allowing them to be close by.

Here is an overview of the shelves.

Top Left:  Craft supplies

Top Middle:  More craft supplies and paints, paint brushes, extra crayons, and pencils.
Middle Shelf:  More crafts supplies and some pocket chart
games.

Top Right:  File boxes with their completed work, wall posters are on top of that.
The wooden box is a set of fancy silverware that never gets used.
Middle Right:  All About Spelling and Reading, Math U See, MFW Kindergarten,
and some general 2nd grade materials.  I also have some rolls of paper that I got from
Ikea a few years ago!  This stuff lasts for ever and is super cheap!

Middle Middle:  Construction paper, no tip water pots, extra school supplies,
science kits.
Bottom Middle:  Scratch paper one tub of white and one of colored,
reading games, weaving loom.

Middle Left: File folders, extra colored pencils, magnifying glasses, US Bingo,
book ends, and other items not currently in use.
Bottom Left:  Extra clip boards, white boards, and chalk boards.  Along with
some left over duct tape.  

That about sums up our craft organization.  As you can see I use my label maker a lot!  I also like to use clear bins in order to see what is inside at a glance.  I started the summer with about 8 or 10 of those file boxes and I got down to 6!  **I realized that I forgot to get a picture of the bottom right side of the shelves, on that side I just have another 2 boxes of extra school supplies and items that we aren't currently using.  We also have a microscope on that shelf next to those boxes.**

In my next post I will share how my boys desks are organized and how my desk is organized.  I also plan to share how I organize my teachers manuals and things like that.  So be sure to check back in!

Weekly Wrap Up- The First Two Weeks of School

It has been such a crazy few weeks!  I totally intended to do a weekly wrap up of our first week of school, but that didn't happen!  Now we are finishing up our second week of school, so how about a two week wrap up?

In case you are wondering what our curriculum is for the year you can find that here.  I posted what we are doing for our all together subjects, 5th grade, 2nd grade and Pre-K 4.  

Our first two weeks have run fairly smoothly, its a big transition for me to be teaching all three of them this year.  Last year I just did the two older ones, and Zach just tagged along and towards the end of the year I included him more.  One change that I made, was beginning our day with some exercise and movement.  I can really see the benefit of doing this, especially for my 7 year old son, who is a very active child.   I can tell that this little bit of 15 minutes of dancing, jumping, and moving benefits him greatly.

All Together Subjects:

History:  The Mystery of History Volume 1

We have completed 6 lessons so far and I am in LOVE with this curriculum!  Its so engaging and written in a conversational kind of way that reading it to my kids is so fun!  We have enjoyed doing the activities that go along with each lesson and making our timeline.

Creating and naming our own animals.  His was
some sort of turtle creature.

Noah created a crab type of animal.

Experiencing what it would have felt like in the Ice Age.

Looking at different types of dinosaurs and finding one
to draw.

Bible:  Apologia Who Is God?

We just began this one this week, and again I am in LOVE!  I have never used any Apologia before but have wanted to try it for a few years.  I am so sad that I didn't get it sooner!  The text is so rich and wonderful, my boys have had fun working in their notebooks and even Zach has been sitting and listening in on the lessons.

Zach:  Pre-K 4

For Zach's first two weeks we have been doing little units to get him used to the schedule and his new workboxes.  His first unit was on Dogs, and this week we did The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Both of these have gone well, and I am pleased with how quickly he has caught onto the rhythm of school.  He know which box to go to first and how to work in order from number 1 to 9.  I have such great hopes for this school year with him.  Next week we will begin the Letter of the Week curriculum.

His first day of workboxes, during our Dog unit.

We started out with only 5 boxes.  

Doing some Caterpillar Graphing

Making his own caterpillar

Noah:  2nd Grade

Reading- Noah began All About Reading Level 2, we have completed lesson one and are almost finished with lesson two.  He is doing well and grasping so much more that I thought he would just starting out again.  Over the summer he read to us a little bit but not as much as I would have hoped.

Math-  Noah is using Math U See Beta this year, he has completed 2 lessons.  I believe that his little brain is wired for numbers!  I think he will zoom through this book with no problems.  His only hindrance is that he can't read well enough to complete the lessons all on his own.  I still need to read him the word problems and the directions.

Handwriting- We began this last week and its another area that is a struggle for him.  Although he does well on his handwriting pages, when asked to write on other paper or form his own sentences he really struggles.  I am planning on throwing in a lot more copy work for him this year.  He is currently using A Reason for Handwriting book B and I love it!  I just think that he will need more practice.

Elijah: 5th Grade

Reading- This year Elijah will be given 3 assigned books to read and then he will have free reading of approved books.  He is an excellent reader and last year read two of the Lord of the Rings books along with the Hobbit.  This year he will continue with those and also with the ones that are required.  His first book is Farmer Boy, we read it as a read aloud book 2 years ago, and he is not happy that I am making him read it again.  I think he is enjoying it though, but not the fact that he is required to read 2 chapters a day.

Math-  He began Teaching Textbooks 5 this year and is doing well.  He loves having it on the computer and the ability to just do his work and not have to wait on me to teach it to him or to grade his papers.  One mistake I made is that in planning I wrote in his assignment book to do lessons 1-3 last week, not really sure on what his pace would be.  Since the first few lessons were really easy I just thought he would zoom through them and move on.  Well not my "letter of the law" child.  He said that he would just do his assigned lessons and wait to move on.  Since then I went ahead and just told him to do a lesson a day.  HA!  Caught cha kid!

Language Arts-  We are using Learning Language Arts through Literature the Purple book this year.  I had intended to begin it last week, but totally forgot!  So we finished up lesson one this week.  I was hoping it would be an independent subject for him, but I can see that I will need to be more hands on.  English/Grammar are very weak points for him so he will need a lot of teaching.  Hopefully by the middle to end of the year he will be working more independently.

Vocabulary-  Elijah also began Wordly Wise 3000.  Vocabulary is another weak point with him.  He completed one lesson this week, and I can see that I made the right decision to add in a separate vocabulary book.  This week was pretty challenging for this one, there were some struggles and some tears, but we made it through.

We also had some fun with duct tape!  I bought the Beginner Book by Warfare by Duct Tape, and over the weekend we had picked up the supplies.  My boys had a blast making their swords, shields and daggers.

Also during our first week of school little Zach turned 4!!  We had a super fun time celebrating him.  He is also very excited that he is now big enough to attend AWANA at our church this coming fall.

Next week we will continue on with the same subjects and then in two more weeks we will begin our co-op and add in Science and Spanish.