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This website offers a software download of Homeschool Tracker that enables you to plan and organize your homeschool. They have a free version (which is very good) and a pro version.

Do you have any websites or blogs that you use when you are planning your homeschooling?

Do you have any great resources for homeschool forms?

Today’s Highlights

The Gift Of Love

Using Cheese To Make Plastic That Cleans Itself?

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Organizing The Shoe Box and Books

By Honey on January 26, 2010 in House and Home

Do you remember recently when I mentioned our shoe box?

It could also be known as the office.

Well, we did a bit of rearranging. We moved all of the miscellaneous books from the hall into the office and moved all the kids books into the hall. The books in the hall were more appropriate for mommies and daddies. I don’t think my boys really need to have access to The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding or my DK Pregnancy and Childbirth textbook. I also don’t think they have much use for His Needs, Her Needs or How to Win Friends and Influence People. I am pretty sure the boys weren’t reading those books, but I feel better know they are tucked away in the office (and there when I might need them).

The shoe box has a hodge podge of stuff from every corner of the house. It was the room where you opened the door, crammed stuff in, and ran. Okay, that is pretty big exaggeration. If you find the other post (the one about my notebook) you will be amazed to see how much stuff we actually fit in there. We are loading the bookshelves with books and tidying up.

This is where I keep all of that homeschool material that will one day be used (or not). You know all that amazing curricula that awaits you on the free table at the local homeschool meeting each fall (after you have already purchased everything for the entire year and you don’t need anymore)? This room houses it all (there are a few boxes in the basement). Did I mention that there are a few boxes stored in boys’ bedroom closets too?

Before you think I have too much stuff (which I already know I do) let me tell you… I acquire things for free and it multiplies. I honestly don’t know where it all comes from. I am working my way through and giving stuff away. It is such a good feeling to give things away (especially things of value).

Sorting through all of the homeschool material has been fun, enlightening, interesting, challenging, and well, I can’t think of anymore descriptive words. Its late… and I should be in bed (but I wanted to write about our day).

Where was I?

We were going through books today and loading up the hall closet with kids books.

The boys have a hard time putting the books on the shelf the proper way, so I came up with a system. Are you ready for this? It is so crazy and simple. We loaded the hall bookshelf up with kids books (I know, I said that already – a couple of times). They can take the books out one at a time to read. When they are done reading they are to put them into a bucket (its big) on the floor in front of the shelf. Then when we are tidying the hallway we will put the books back up on the shelf (or whenever we see the bucket getting full).

This way the boys will have free reign of those books. Books hopefully won’t end up all over their bedroom floor and get trampled on again (although, I know that is bound to happen sooner or later). And the most important thing is that my homeschool books won’t go disappearing never to be seen again (or colored in – you know those black line master books!).

The room is shaping up. Things are getting organized. We have a box of books to get rid of. We even recycled damaged beyond repair books. We found some new gems and some old treasures to read again. We even found some fun board books for the babies.

What are you cleaning up in your life these days? I would love to hear about it.

I Sewed A Dress Today!

My Absolutely Must Do Everyday List

Home Made Christmas

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Planning Our Next Term

By Honey on January 3, 2010 in One Room Schoolhouse

After a long break (from our formal curriculum) for the holidays, I feel ready to take on the next ten weeks of school (sort of). To be honest I am actually pretty excited about starting up again. I feel much more prepared and organized. I have to say that I even feel more rested. I have taken the last week or so to work on my planning for this coming term. I have purchased a planner, typed out a schedule, and begun to photocopy materials needed. I will be doing the photocopying weekly because that seems way less stressful and not so overwhelming to me. To me it makes much more sense to set aside a couple of hours a week to print out and gather everything needed for the week to come rather than to photocopy like crazy to get ten weeks of stuff prepared. I also think that I might lose excitement and momentum that way (or burn out rather quickly!). Having to take a new look at our materials every weekend will keep me inspired and being creative in our homeschool planning (at least that is the goal).

We are going to step back from workboxes for a week or more and get reacquainted with Sonlight and the rest of our curriculum after our break. This is how we approached school in the summer and it worked for us. We took the month of August to get used to our curriculum and then we added in the workboxes. We will be weaving the workboxes back in shortly (after we establish some routines and structure again). Don’t you just love holidays? You take all this time to relax and then you have to rebuild all the routines and structure again.

Can I take a brief moment to share how impressed I was with my kids today? They were helpful and did some wonderful housecleaning jobs. I always wonder if they are capable of more and they clearly showed me today that I need to stretch them a bit outside of their comfort zones. Elisha (9) cleaned the upstairs hall and helped to clean the living room. Malachi (6) and Zion (18 months) vacuumed the kitchen floor together. I was very impressed.

My homeschool planning for this term involved taking all the scattered (and annoying) teacher’s manuals and merging them into one binder. I made a document in Open Office and filled in each subject for ten weeks. (Noreen, you can see this when you come on Friday). I put the subjects in the binder in the order we do them. Bible, Language Arts (Malachi, Moses, Elisha), Math (Malachi, Moses, Elisha), History, Science, Art, and Read Alouds . Behind each schedule I put everything we need for one week of work including any notes from the Teacher’s Manuals, any worksheets, and anything else. I also created two baskets on our shelf. Basket one includes everything needed for group work – Bible, History, Science, Art, Read Alouds, and everything related. Basket two includes everything needed for individual work (this will take the place of the workboxes and be the work with mom box for now).

Last night I spent time photocopying and organizing and made great progress. I was quite proud of my productivity and then… the printer ran out of ink. I panicked. All of my plans… I calmed myself. If we can’t get ink before I start school on Monday it will be okay, I will do what I can. Do you hear that encouraging self talk there? It’s okay if the plans fall apart… you just do what you can. We were able to get our ink refilled today… long story short…. thanks mom for helping out… so tonight, I am back to printing and preparing.

Just a note here – the printer ink didn’t work! It printed 4 pages and then stopped. So weird! So back to the self talk… it will be okay. We can still do school this week even if everything didn’t get prepared the way that I wanted it to. A few deep breaths. Look and see what we are really missing. Change things up a little bit. Work on being flexible and adaptable (both good character traits – some character building going on here!).

I thought I would pop in here for a quick visit and let you all know where our homeschool is headed this term. I haven’t talked about our school for a bit because with the server crash and then the great disappearance there have been many other things to write about and focus on. I can’t wait to get back to sharing more about our everyday school bits and pieces and focusing on what I love – spending time with and homeschooling my children.

The goal is to run hard for the next ten weeks and then take a few weeks break to garden, study poetry, and spend some time on a unit study about Canada.

Do you have any homeschooling goals for this new year? Have you done any planning, tweaking, rearranging, organizing of your homeschool or workboxes? I would love to hear about it. Please share a link to your relevant blog posts or leave your thoughts in the comments.

Having some fun…

Around The Brown House

A Trip To The Museum

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