It doesn’t take too many years into your homeschool journey before you realize that there is a LOT of paper involved, loose papers, notebooking pages, art projects, workbooks. Pretty soon your house starts to look like one huge unorganized filing cabinet! I knew that I wanted to control the paper monster in two ways: 1) have all the papers needed for school ready to go when I wanted them and 2) have a method to deal with our paper trail once we completed the year.
Preparing for the Year
I love to pre-plan our school subjects for the year and part of that involves printing everything we need, tearing pages out of workbooks, and creating notebook pages that way I can grab what we need when we need it. Finding a way to store all of that paper was proving difficult until I decided to file it. There are two pretty common methods for filing in homeschool circles, filing by week and filing by subject. When you file by the week, you place any papers that will be needed for that school week. So for week one, you would file all the worksheets, notebooking pages, lapbooks, reading lists, etc. that you would need for that week of school. I’ll be honest. This method didn’t work for our family because sometimes my kids will surge ahead in a subject or two and I was digging through folders trying to find the work.
I’ve been filing by subject for about three years now and it works very well. I pull out the needed papers and file them by day in the girls’ weekly work binders every Sunday night. If my first grader decides to complete a week’s worth of math in two days {like she did this past week!}, it’s not a problem because I can go to that subject file and pull out more worksheets. It makes school so easy when you open up the file and everything you need is at your fingertips.
Another step I’ve added to my system is to attach a piece of paper to the inside of my file where I record what extra books and/or supplies I need to purchase or reserve at the library for that subject.
I also staple my lesson plans for that subject in the front of the file so that I know exactly where we are and what we need for the upcoming week.
This makes my filing system an all-in-one paper/lesson plan/ reading list station for the year!
What Do You File?
A better question is probably, what don’t I file?!?! I file our works of art for art study, memory work, lapbook pieces, notebooking pages. I tear workbooks apart and file the pages because it’s so much easier to write on loose paper than in a workbook (do those things EVER lay flat!). I print out documents that I’ve downloaded for the year’s learning and file those in the appropriate subject and if I come across something that would work great for the year, then I can instantly file it in the appropriate spot as well.
Ending the Year
I have a second filing box just like the first one that is numbered for the weeks of our school year, 1-36. When the week is over I have my daughters choose a page or two of their best work to file away. I also try to take pictures of any projects or art pieces and file those as well since the original might not make it through the year. Once we finish our school year I have a nice set of work samples for each student. We don’t have to keep a portfolio for homeschooling in our state, but I usually go through their work and choose some things that I think were exceptionally well done. I put the papers and photos into a large manila envelope, write the name and grade on the front, and store it. It’s nice to go back and look at how far they have progressed in the year and from previous years. Any other papers are taken out and thrown away.
This is a very simple system to organize the paper in your homeschool before the year starts and as it ends.
Chelli has been homeschooling for five years and married for ten. She has three children Chipette (4th grade), Magpie (1st grade), and Monkey (4 years old). When she’s not educating or blogging at The Planted Trees, you can generally find her with her nose in a book, cooking up something yummy in the kitchen, or if she’s really lucky you can’t find her at all because she’s traveling with friends and family.
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