Getting organized for a new school year

In preparation for the start of the new school year in our home, I thought I would share some of the ways I try to help things go a little smoother in our day and weeks. But first, I want to thank my friend Laura, from The Smile House in Austin, Texas (she is an amazing photographer) for ~~helping~~ converting my word documents and pdf’s to files I can share on my blog. I’m not saying I would have never figured it out on my own, I’m just saying it had been 3.5 hours and things were not looking very pretty!

This is my Teaching Schedule.

It has what subjects I am teaching on which days, and to whom. This is the first year that I will be incorporating my 3 year old into group lessons with her brothers, so this is a very big deal for me. It’s taking me out of my comfort zone to not teach them each individually—which is sort of impossible with 4 now!

This is a page I created called Lesson Planner Reminders. I essentially use this planner on Sunday nights to prepare myself for the coming week. Ideally I would like to review up to a month ahead in my lesson plans and fill out the forms by what I need for the week—but I haven’t gotten there yet!

Read: Is for sections I need to read before teaching and sections that we need to read together for the lesson.

Copy/Laminate: is pretty self explanatory. We do a lot of photocopying and laminating around here!

Buy/Pick-up: Is for the list of materials that I don’t have on hand. They can be materials I need to borrow from the library or teacher’s resource center, or purchase.

And this sort of intimidating looking schedule is my Personal weekly schedule. Time management isn’t my strong suit, so I need to have a schedule that deals with blocks of time so that I can efficiently plan out my week. I print out this schedule to use this schedule until I get into a routine without referring to it. At that time I block out the times shown on this schedule in Outlook and sync it with my Blackberry so that I don’t schedule appointments during any of my time blocks. For me, this is the only way I can get anything done. Otherwise, entire days would get away from me and I’d feel like I accomplished nothing. On my print out the open times are shown in white, not black. You should ideally have chunks of white spaces on your calendar to give you some sanity!

I hope by sharing some of the ideas I am implementing into my homeschool I can in some way inspire or encourage you into developing a plan that fits your family. Please know that I am in no way trying to convey that I have all the answers, or that I am an expert in any way on homeschooling. If you would like to share your organizational tips please post a comment.

You can also visit 1+1=1 for more ideas.

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