At the beginning of each school year, I help my children prepare their binders. They use two-inch binders to compile each of their subjects – mathematics, language, handwriting, creative writing, spelling, science, history, Bible, and Spanish. After the dividers are put into the binders, we see that a good quantity of lined paper is inserted between each divider. My children have vinyl pencil cases that are three-hole-punched to put in the front of their binders. The pencil cases eliminate the confusion of finding pencils, pens, rulers, and erasers each day during school time. I allow my children to personalize their binders with self-stick letters from the office supply store. They enjoy putting their names and grade levels on the front covers, along with the brightly colored stickers they earn for their good grades and good attitudes during school.

After we finish readying the binders, we turn our attention to organizing their bookshelves. I use a three-tiered shoe rack that I have placed on a shelf in an old entertainment unit in our study. I have a spot labeled with each child’s name in which he stores his binders (when not in use) as well as his various textbooks or workbooks. The children rarely have to be reminded to put their books away since it is so easy to do.

Now that the students are organized, the teacher must fall into line! I prepare my own bookshelves by placing each of my teaching texts on a shelf according to grade level. I find it much easier to have the materials divided this way so I can easily locate the answer keys and curriculum when grading or lesson planning.
In addition to our individual bookshelves, I also have several school library bookcases. These are organized by subject or category. Our reference bookcase has math, science, and Bible resources on the top shelf. The second one houses our state reference books and our Childcraft encyclopedias. The third shelf houses a set of animal life reference books, and the fourth contains our adult encyclopedias. I also have two more bookcases that are stocked with my various thrift-store and library-sale finds. I have labeled the shelves fiction and non-fiction so we can locate things fairly easily. Should we add many more books to our collection, I will organize them more accurately.

Once I have the binders, teacher manuals, and bookcases completed, I turn my attention to organizing our art supplies. I purchased an organizing system called Drawers For All to control our scissors, glue, paints, etc. There are many different types of these drawers – from single drawers to drawers with eight sections. I use a three-sectioned drawer for various types of paper – lined paper in one, construction paper in another, and plain, white paper in the third. I use the four-drawer unit to give each child a “schoolbox” of his own. The children like to put their treasures in their “special drawers,” as they call them. I keep my drawer organizers in a tall stack in my laundry room – thus keeping potential coloring and painting disasters to an area that is easy to clean.

Educational toys such as puzzles, games, and felt board pieces are kept in the entertainment unit in our study. Things that the younger children use are on the lower level of the unit, and older children’s items are on the upper level. This system works well for us and makes it much easier for all of the children to clean what they have used.

Implementing organization need not be costly. If your budget is tight, begin looking around your home for items not in use that can be pressed into service to organize your home school materials. I have trimmed empty laundry detergent boxes for magazine organizers. I have covered cookie tins to use in corralling the magnetic alphabet pieces we have collected. A three-tiered shoe rack can be used to divide an existing shelf into more usable sections. In my previous home, I turned a coat closet into a school closet. Be creative and inventive with your space and resources – you may just surprise yourself!

Take time to list the problems you are having with the storage of your materials. Make notations as to what items or areas you can use to solve the problem. Determine to work the plan and reorganize your school things. Organize one area at a time to avoid feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Realize that you may have to spend some time adjusting what you have done until it “fits” your needs.

You will know that your organization goals have been reached when you no longer lose valuable school time looking for misplaced items. You will feel refreshed and rejuvenated as a teacher – what better gift could you give to yourself and your students?!

The post Organizing Your Home School appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

Most of the principles I use to manage my time come from what I learned from my mother and from my Bible reading. I found that there is much wisdom on time management in Proverbs, Titus, and I Timothy. I try to keep my priorities in the following order: God, husband, the kids, my job, and outside ministries.

Some of the principles I use for managing my time:

1. Combine trips as much as possible. Wherever I go, I make sure that I hit all the shops I need to in one trip. This reduces gas usage, the time I spend shopping or running errands, and the money I spend by not being out so much.
2. Do not feel that your children need to be taking classes for everything. Many women I talk to are stressed because they are constantly driving the kids to sports, music, art, etc. In our family, we have not yet had a child in organized sports because we, as a family, are not willing to sacrifice our family sanity for the schedules that sports teams require.
3. Limit your activities just as you do your children’s. Just because an activity is a “good” activity does not make it a “God” activity. Our time is precious, and we need to guard it carefully.
4. Re-evaluate your activities and schedule at least once a year. I usually take stock of our school and home life at the end of each school year. I make lots of adjustments, taking time to pray so that I have clear direction as to what I am called to do.
5. Use the phone. Much time is wasted going to a store to see if they carry a needed item. I find it a better use of my time to call the store to see if the item I want is carried there.
6. Train your children to help around the house. You cannot do it all and survive!  Kids can do a lot more than we often expect. My kids all have chores, and though they grumble, they are also proud of themselves for being able to cook and clean.
7. Use the VCR. There are some shows I really enjoy and like to watch. If I record the show, I can watch it at a time more convenient for me and skip the commercials. An hour-long show lasts only about 45 minutes without commercials.
8. Multi-task!  I almost never sit down to watch TV without having some laundry to fold, ironing to do, or papers to grade.  I also wash dishes while I heat something up in the microwave. It is amazing how many dishes I can actually wash in the three minutes it takes to heat water for a cup of tea.
9. Work smarter, not harder!  If I have laundry to wash, clothes to fold, and dinner to start all at the same time, I will start the washer, get dinner into the oven, and then go sit down watching the news while folding the laundry. If I need to mop the kitchen floor, I will just go ahead and mop all the floors, since I already have the mop, bucket, and cleaner ready. Make use of the appliances you own. In earlier days, many homemakers employed maids, cooks, and laundry women. Today, we have crock pots, bread makers, washers, dryers, etc.
10. Keep a running list. On the refrigerator I have a list on which to write what I need from the store as I run out/low on things. This practice eliminates time trying to remember or having to go through the house and pantry writing my list on shopping day.
11. Organize and eliminate!  I try to keep only what we need and go through the house on a periodic basis, pulling unused and outgrown things from our rooms to donate to a good cause. After I declutter, I organize. Much less time is spent looking for art supplies if they are in a designated place. Much less time is spent caring for our home when everything has a place and we only have the things we really need.  Do our things have us, or do we have our things?
12. Stick to a schedule. We have a pretty standard schedule in our home. It helps me with time management because I do not have to spend time thinking about what I need to do. It also helps me to get from one activity to another. Elizabeth George, author of A Woman after God’s Own Heart, says that this sort of schedule, which she calls “horizontal planning,” conserves and generates energy by cutting down indecision. She suggests that we try to put as many tasks as possible into a routine.
13. If your children do have some extra-curricular activities, try to find something that all or most of them can do together but on their own levels. My two daughters are in 4-H. One daughter is 15 years old, and the other one is 10 1/2 old. They each do what they like on their own level, but I only have to drive to one meeting for both of them to be involved in their activities. My boys participate in Scouting, and it works the same way. The kids enjoy the benefits of extra activities, and I am not running myself ragged taking five children to various meetings.

A sample day at my house:

I start my day at 6 a.m. by watching my favorite Bible teacher, Joyce Meyer. I throw in a load of clothes to wash while I fold others as I watch her show, “Life In the Word.”  When the show is over at 6:30 a.m., I pop the freshly washed clothes into the dryer and put away the folded ones. I take a moment to read the Proverb for that day and maybe something else from another part of the Bible. I have a short prayer time, and then I get ready for the day.

I make my kids a list detailing their chores for the day and their school assignments. I get ready for work and am out the door by 7:30 a.m. When I get back home at 11:30 a.m., I check on the chores and schoolwork and prepare lunch.  After lunch we do schoolwork until it is completed – usually around 3-3:30 p.m.

I often will take a short nap and then prepare dinner while the kids play outside, use the computer, or watch a few favorite TV shows. We eat dinner around 6-6:30 p.m. I try to grade their papers as they complete them but often will have a grading session on Sunday evenings.  I try to do my shopping on Saturday mornings when I make the rounds to the grocery store, bread store, and dollar stores. I try to plan ahead, buying gifts when I see good markdowns and stocking up on things we use if there is a good sale.

I am highly scheduled, which enables me to know what I am doing and what free time I have to do other things. Kids’ activities are on Mondays; my Moms’ groups are usually on Tuesdays; we have a local park day and library day on Wednesday afternoons; home church is on Thursdays; Fridays are free; Saturdays are for shopping; and Sundays are church and family day.

Just remember, as you continue to seek godly wisdom on managing your time, God will supply. Your home schooling will be enriched, as will everything else to which you put your hands.

The post Time Management For Moms appeared first on Texas Home School Coalition.

When we were deciding to homeschool, my lack of self-discipline was one of my husband’s greatest concerns. What he did not know was that as a classroom teacher I had a method for overcoming my disorganization, and I thought it would also work at home. I believe time has proven me correct.

My organization method takes several hours of a week about three times a year. I begin by deciding on the curricula we are going to use for all the different areas we want to cover in approximately a semester’s time. (I have one great secret for making that decision—prayer.) After that most difficult decision is over, I sit down with each textbook, workbook, and other materials for each subject. I briefly look over each one, just to get a good feel for what the materials cover; then I group the materials that belong together. Here is where the fun starts.

For example, I want to organize Bowie’s Guide to Texas, Stephen’s Texas History, and Sam’s Fun History Activities for the State of Texas. I get out notebook paper, pencil, and the textbook, workbook, and test book for Bowie’s Guide to Texas. I title the notebook paper, Bowie’s Guide to Texas, skip a line, and write “1.”

Now I try to decide about how much material we can cover in one class period. In looking at chapter one in Bowie’s Guide to Texas, I think we can cover pages 2-8, so I write “read pp. 2-8.” Now I look at the workbook and test book and see that there are no activities in those items which correlate to pages 2-8, so I go to the next line and write “2.” Again I try to decide about how much material we can cover in one class period, and this time I think it is pages 9-12 and Activity 1, page 3 in the activity book. I write “read pp. 9-12; act.1, p. 3.” Going to the third line, I write “3.” I see that for the third day, we need to read pages 13-17, do Activities 2 and 3, and take a quiz over the previous material. So I write, “read pp. 13-17, act 2-3, p. 4-7, quiz 1, p. 3.” Then I continue, breaking each segment of all the related materials into daily bites of information. For some days I may choose enough material to take only twenty minutes, but other days I think will be more challenging or interesting, so I will select enough material for an hour or two. Never is this intended to be exhaustive in everything I want to do with the material, but this is my skeleton on which I will later put meat.

Once I have finished Bowie’s Guide to Texas, I will proceed and do Stephen’s Texas History in the same way; when finished, I will organize Sam’s Fun History Activities for the State of Texas. After I finish organizing each individual component that I will use to teach Texas history, I sit down with all of the materials, my lists, and a traditional teacher’s plan book. I label each row with the different subjects we are going to cover during the year, but I leave the column headings open. The row for this will be labeled, obviously, Texas History. In the first grid space, I begin to tie all of the notebook pages for each of the resources together. If I think that we should read pages 2-8 in Bowie’s Guide to Texas (BG), read pages 1-3 in Stephen’s Texas History (STH), and do Activity 1 in Sam’s Fun History Activities for the State of Texas (Sam’s), I only have to write in my planner, “BG#1, STH#1, Sam’s #1.” For the next day, I think we only need to do the next work in Sam’s, so I write in my planner, “Sam’s #2.” When we get to the next day, I think we can do work from BG and Sam’s only, so I will write, “BG#2, Sam’s#3.” Looking at the fourth day, it may be “BG#3, STH #2.” I will keep on doing this until my planner is full of my abbreviations from my notebook pages.

Once Texas history is done, I proceed to plan math, science, reading, grammar, spelling, and everything else in the same way. I always do all of this in pencil and never go too far ahead. I always leave time for creativity by not putting dates or days at the top of the columns. I may put notes to myself on a teaching strategy that I want to use, but the bare bones are my main concern. When we begin school, we are always on the first page and in the first few columns, and I expect my children to look at the planner and the notebook pages daily to get their assignments. As the days and weeks go by, we naturally go faster in some subjects than in others so that we may be on page ten in the planner for science but only on page eight for reading. As time passes, I check off both on my lists and in the bottom right corner of my planner grid as we complete each section. Sometimes I use color-coded checks for each child because one moves faster than the other when they are using the same materials. This keeps me in touch with how we are faring time-wise and lets me know if I need to consider speeding up or slowing down.

We have never stuck with my plans exactly because there is always something I did not expect that happens, whether it is a child loving the subject and wanting to delve deeper or a family member getting sick who requires weeks of care. When the latter happens (sometimes it is Mom–I once had pneumonia for four weeks), my system can be a lifesaver. No, the teaching and enrichment that I wanted to do and would have done if I had not been sick did not get done, but my sons knew just how much they were expected to do each day without Mom there. My planner was my substitute teacher. The system worked because the boys had become accustomed to looking in the planner and then to the notebook sheets each day to see what their requirements were for that day.

When I am really, really organized, I even leave a spot for housework, piano lessons, baseball games and practices, family time, and whatever else we have going on in our lives at the time! One of the great things about this system is that I can use it for traditional textbooks and workbooks, for unit studies, or for a combination. I also use the planner to designate which material I want my child to do on his own, and which material we will get together to do either one-on-one or in a group. I have used this system for different age levels using the same materials by giving more challenging assignments to my more advanced students while allowing younger students to learn at their own paces. My system also prevents me from losing a great supplemental activity, because I make sure that idea is written down in the planner for the appropriate lesson so that I will not forget it.

The penultimate step in this process is to take all the activities I need to copy to the photocopier and to secure all the note cards, construction paper, folders, and whatever else I think we will need. I try to put this into a folder, box, or tub labeled either by child or by subject. I try very hard to anticipate everything I could possibly need and have it on hand so that when we reach Sam’s #72 three months later, I already have all we need available.

Finally, I complete one of my three organizing weeks for the year, and we start doing the schooling. There were about two years when I did not use this method, and I feel like those were lost years; because I am not sure what we did. I know we schooled and worked, but I do not have a planner to reassure me. We moved recently, and I got to see how much we had really accomplished using this plan.

When we began home schooling, I was always afraid that someone was going to knock on my door and want to see proof of our schooling, so I kept every paper and every workbook in boxes with my planners on top. As each box was stuffed full, I put them away in the attic. When we were packing to move, I sent my two nearly grown sons into the attic to get “those few boxes of school work” out of the attic. After what seemed to all of us to be hours, they finally came out of the sweltering attic after having retrieved twenty-five or so boxes of schoolwork. There it was–years of planning and working and schooling–all coordinated by a disorganized mom!

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