HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM: 5 Simple Systems!

okay the time is here homeschool organization time you guys have been asking for this video and here it is I hope you're excited I'm going to show you my five systems that we use in our home school so I pray that it will bless you in your home school as well so let's keep going well thank you for joining me on this home-school organization video now let me start with introducing myself in case you have not met me on youtube or on my blog my name is christy clover and I'm a homeschool mom of five yes five and they range from teens to tots I currently have three who are officially part of our home-school but the girls are also part of our home-school because they're part of our family so we are going into our eighth year of home-school and we're really excited to get going and I do have other videos that homeschooling here on YouTube so I hope that you'll check those out you can see the curriculum that we're going to be using this year I also have an end-of-the-school-year video that shows some of these systems as well that it goes into more detail about how I organized it at the end of the year how I end out and close out our school year so I hope those videos will help you as well and I will link those below and possibly a few above as well but let's get started I will show you system number one and I can tell you I have been through so many trial and errors of trying to get going with homeschooling when we first were planning to home-school this is honestly the thing that plagued me I'm like how do I organize all the stuff I mean right stuff everywhere we knew home-school you will have stuff and you need to know how to organize it so the first system that I have found that I tell you has blown my socks off this system I have kind of tweaked it through the years this is are going to be our third year using it and it has just made homeschool life so much easier if you have little kids and big kids in your home school I tell you this is how you get your big kids set for school because you want your big kids become more independent in their learning and this is a great way to do it so number one tip is to plan your home-school by week not by day I give my kids they can work out how they're going to break it up if I have those that are a little bit more um shall we say organizationally challenged or diligence challenged then those the ones that I will actually help them break it up day by day but as far as organizing goes I set it up so it's all there work for the week is all set before them so how I do that is using my handy dandy little crate right here and I have all of my kids color-coded that's one of the big things that we do in our home school is color code everybody can I only have five kids so at least I don't have a complete rainbow of colors but so far there are files or folders enough that you know we can pick from different types of colors okay so my oldest is green then we got blue and red and I separate them out as you can see by tabs so I'm only using the first section for my oldest the middle section for my second and for my third just that last section so it just makes it again visually they can grab it they know exactly where they are so the tabs are broken down by weeks we school in a thirty four week period some go thirty-six weeks I'm not required in the state of California to do anything more than just what I need to do to teach my kids so we try to get done in 34 weeks now know that life is a homeschooler in life in general if you have kids you're probably teaching them things along the way it's not like 34 weeks and that's all we do our schooling no we take vacations we're going to DC this year we're really excited because we're gonna be studying US history so our DC trip that's not one of our school weeks but I can guarantee you we're going to be learning so that could count as a week it counts as school days for us but again coming back to the crate system what is awesome is that oops I'm showing you week one week one empty because I start slow on the week one so week two I'll show you my little cents so what I do in each of these folders if there is a piece of paper that needs to get done this is where it goes for that week so I don't always put math in I think that I'm going to put a few math pages in this year only because math is one of those subjects that win um something's difficult you want to slow down maybe only do one page if it's easy one of two do two or three pages at the math so with homeschooling you have that flexibility to press on and go really hard at it for the subject or to slow down if you need to learn better and I find math is one of those subjects that when I have put it into the folder for the whole year we are constantly pulling out different weeks of pushing them ahead and pulling them forward so I just found it's easier to keep all of their math in one section and I will show you that or where I keep those in a minute but for this what I do is I actually tear apart work butts right tearing apart things sounds crazy even bound work books I tear them apart I don't need a bazillion workbooks and work pages I don't have to save all of that information so this makes it so easy so you have penmanship in here and then so this is penmanship for the week we use a reason for handwriting so he has all the days on here the last day day 4 he's going to be writing out his memory version that the memory verse but the piece of scripture that he's been practicing on here so this again shows you that this is one whole week of penmanship next I have grammar this is all I've loaded in here so far I think I'm going to add some of our Bible in here and pasta oh definitely some history notebook pages so I have not finished organizing for our history yet but I wanted to get the video to you so I will make history notebook pages that I will slip into the appropriate weeks as well and those will go in each folder so this is just this is gonna it's for your grammar pages for the week and again you can see I tore apart the workbook do not be afraid to tear things apart you have to keep it all together again this works so well because what also is great when you have all this work that if you need to go somewhere you just stick it in the clipboard and voila you have school on the go so this has been so handy for our family just to have everything so my kids know exactly where their work is each week they pull their folly folder and then they just keep this on their desk usually and just work until the work is gone so for those that are more diligent they figure out that if you can get through the work quickly then you have less work at the end of the week so this is probably the number number number one thing that I recommend to all home schoolers I have had friends who have been homeschooling for years who have introduces to and they say it's like by far the best system ever kids really like having a little bit of control and having some independence so again my older kids know exactly what needs to get done so this is the system we use for that and if you want to see a little closer I have on week one I have start of the school year here there's a little visual and I have end of the school year at the back now one thing to also note is that on my individual folders you do not see a week number on this save yourself the headache at the end of the year you know we're going this is the third year we've used this so I end up with these folders stacked everywhere and the last thing I want to do is go through and have to numerically sort everything at the end of the year after they're done so I only keep the hanging folders right here and as we're done with the week I just slip it behind so that the next week is upfront and then if I am good and on top of it then I will put these back in but again I don't want to have to keep track and it's just more busy work right cut out the busy work make things simpler so this is how I use my crate system so I hope it works for you and so again this is system number one okay system number two ready or not here it comes so system number two is my binder system I really really really love this as well again using a combination so my kids pull from here and then they can either work from here and just do their full week and just keep it in the folder I have my oldest he loves doing that he does not use the day to day thing in here however I found with my other kiddos they need the extra help and so the first set of tabs I love these pocket little organizers here I will link this on my blog posts that is going to be linked to this video so you'll see that below um but I won't put in exactly what these are but I love the tabs that have the pockets first of all it makes it really great for sorting you can stick work here or things like that but this is Monday through Friday and what I do is then if they need help getting organized for the week then I just slide the work in here they slide it in after they have separated that so they know exactly what they're doing each day and so if you want your kids to separate it out daily then this is where you would do that the next section I have behind all of the days of the week are there different subjects looks like one of them fell out but I have all their different subjects so history and Bible when they are done with their notebook page this is where it gets stored and what I've done and these notebook pages is that we have these clear page protectors for notebook pages I often have them bound at the end of the year so we don't hole punch them so what we'll do is just slide them in here and keep them in order sometimes we will hole punch them and that's fine in fact this is last year's work that has I guess they have last year's work we hole punched but other years I don't hole punch and then you can put them in the plastic protectors it's handy for the art dissection as well is to put some of these extra page protectors back there to protect the art because art you definitely don't want a hole punch but yes anything that I want them to keep so they're writing tab here this is where they'll put their final drafts so their finished product for their writing that they have done their report or whatever it is they've worked on for writing that week this is where it goes so this really becomes all the work that I save for that year so this is again the binder system and I hope that it helps you okay system number three is my checklist system so again I like to organize by week but I create here I'll show you the finished product first um so I create these weekly checklists for my kiddos we have used my father's world and past so it just depends on what curriculum you're using but what I did is I took the teacher manual last year I just widened out the work that we weren't going to be doing and then added in the work that we were going to be doing so like we used some different curriculum on some of the like language arts and some of the math use different curriculum than they suggest so I went ahead and adapt to that but that's all it was is this is I just put each week's work so what I did this year since we are not going to be following my father's world exactly because my friend has blessed me with her son light books and we're not going to use the sunlight curriculum exactly either so I made my own checklist so I have 34 of these little checklist it has everything by day but again all I'm gonna do is go through and just write a couple quick little things most the time they're having to write in their own work so for math whatever math pages they did they'll write in on here but it's a great way to keep records and to keep just track of what needs to get done because sometimes I really the goal is that again they can work independently so they have a checklist I can keep their week's work here and they can separate it out by day in their binder and then they write it in on here or sometimes again I'll just have written down what is in the checklist and sometimes I do write it out so my oldest I don't need to put all the extra stuff he writes it in but my soon-to-be 6th grader in my first grader I definitely write their work in for them even though I think my six bird is about ready to take the plunge and be able to write it down himself he does have to write his math pages but this is how I organize this out and I will have better pictures of this on the blog post as well but the way I get to this point is I have a spot for the week in the spot for the days now how I separate that out is that I create a year at a view calendar and that calendar helps me to keep track and kind of plan out where are we taking vacations which holidays are we taking what week is a full weekend counts as out as like a week so like week one week two and you know so it helps me to kind of figure out you know where are co-op days so I go through and I just list everything out I literally figure out I have itself populated so my husband's like you should put that in a blog I'm like I'd have to like completely custom make it for each individual person but if I figure it out I will put it on the blog but each day and so I just again self populated that on the calendar put in the days a number of days that we're going to be homeschooling as well as the number of weeks so the first column is my number week so that's kind of my gear to view calendar and then um I also do an attendance calendar as well but this helps me to figure out you know what our weeks are going to look like so I can date my checklist and that really really helps one other cute little thing is I always have a master binder so I have my own master binder again I have these bound so as soon as I have finished filling everything in I'm going to take it in and get it bound I like keeping fun little things so on mine I have all my kids on the side and different you know preschool ideas but I will put their memory work in their binder I will put blank pages for any key facts that they need to memorize and then I also of course but their checklist in there and I usually also add to theirs their goals so I write out their goals and I put it in there as well and we have our fun little get to know me sheets for the beginning of the school year and the end of the school year this is linked on my blog and it will be updated by the time this video hits it has last year's dates on it but if you look for the blog post ten ways to add fun to your first day of school that is where we have these very very fun asked fun key facts and it's hysterical to look from Jan or so that January but from September to June whenever you finish your school year to see the difference see how much they grew my kids grow so much one school year so these are really fun and I hope you like them so again you were it's available on my blog raising clovers calm the next system I'm going to introduce you to is my hanging file folder system that one is where we store the work that is done for the year now one key thing that I like to explain is that you know the daily work so like the non-test that gets stored in there and so that once it's graded it goes in there but I also have a separate little folder literally just like this matt says math tests or grammar tests or whatever else that they need to have separated up so at the end of the school year I just grab this little folder and that's all I need is their math tests I toss all of the extra day-to-day work but it helps me to stay organized to this school year and it just really helps in general so yes I have the hanging files I have them sorted again by color and also so I can separate the children but they know that that's where the work goes when they're done I do have an inbox as well so if there's something that needs to be graded then it goes there and then I give it back to them if it needs to be it happy corrected at all by them and then they know that they have to file it in the filing system so that is our system number four okay last but not least are the little folders and so this I wanted to show you because this is how we did it our first year if you have little kids you may not need to get this complex so what I do are these you know if everybody is from school like the peachy I think that's what they were called right the peachy ones the nothing he came all colorful so I color code them by subject in this case and then my kids I just put their names separately so this one I and I did I when we first started I did it by day so money was Monday's work Tuesday's work Wednesday's work nice found that was kind of complicated especially since the writing or the penmanship program that we use has like everything on one day so I was like oh my god have to keep like switching it so instead what I did is I put all of their spelling in one all their handwriting the one writing whatever your subjects are I just separated them out and put them in these little folders made it really nice and handy you know again I was doing this once a week so at the beginning of the school year and you can use this system I would probably use this system again so everything's set and then I would take it out and just help them stuff these so this is one way to simplify if you have younger kids or maybe you don't need you don't have as many kids as I have even though if you only have one child I'm telling you still on a crate system you won't have to color code it you can use all three sections now I didn't mention this before but was really funny is that these folders they come in a hundred which means if you're using only the front section you're only getting about thirty three of them so most schools are 34 to 36 weeks so I had to buy a separate box so I got an extra box that had multiple colors and it was just enough to put me over to get everything filled but I was like come on people make some folders for the home schoolers out there that have more weeks in 33 so those are my systems I hope that they bless you I hope that it helps bring order to your home school I don't care what time of the year you are watching this you can change things up and reorganize your home school because again the tagline on my blog is simple solutions for more joyful life and that is true for homeschool too I want to bring you the simple solutions that I have found to bring more joy to my home school to you as well I am Sharon we were supposed to share right so I hope that you will join me here again please subscribe to my youtube channel and also check out my blog again I am going to link a whole bunch of blog posts below and I'm sure I've already linked some titles up above I do that after I do the videoing um but please subscribe to my blog because I would love to connect and if you are not on periscope you need to be so on periscope my handle that sounds special to handle on periscope is raising clovers all one word and I would love to connect I typically periscope at this time of filming Monday through Friday around 10 o'clock around 2 o'clock but I need grace because I'm not always on time but if you follow me then you should get notifications that of when I go live and that's a great time if you're a home schooler come on ask me questions I have a lot I do QA all throughout the week so I love having people come on I do meal planning tips I do all kinds of stuff I even talked about how I do my laundry on their buns so please please please join me on periscope join me here on YouTube and on my blog so again I really truly really truly just want to bless you I want to make things easier so you can enjoy the joy that is to be found in homeschooling and in just family life as well so thank you so much for coming over and watching this put any comments below or any questions below that you would like to have answered as well I try to get to those within the week so take care and have a very blessed day bye guys one last tip when it comes to checklist that I have found this to be really really helpful because I get overwhelmed especially if you use a set planner I would get overwhelmed if we'd get behind and I felt like we were always scrambling to get caught up with what's on the calendar so what I do with my checklist is that I write in an ink that which week it is so I'll put week 1 week 2 so I go through and fill out all 34 of those sheets of paper for the checklist and I do write in on in ink what week it is however I do not put the date in I do have that calendar that I showed you are here at a glance but I don't put the data and that is like you know best-case scenario that's the schedule that we're going to keep but you know what life happens people get sick you end up taking an extra vacation or you don't take a vacation that you were planning on so all kinds of things come up during the school year it's really hard to say this is what we're going to do you know right now nothing's changing so things change I mean for me I got pregnant unexpectedly one year and I had to take some extra time off from my morning sickness so what I found is helpful and this is going to sound strange but I do leave those on the dates free but when I found as if I feel like we're getting behind we take a break and we call it week 13b so what I do is on the back side of the of the checklist so on the blank sheet because again I'm going to have it bound on that blank side right in front of where the next week will be week 14 I've put 13 B or whatever week it is that you are going to recreate and why it would be our catch-up week and that's when we go through we try to finish off things that we had not gotten to so sometimes I kind of take a break and take up take two for a certain week and sometimes it's several weeks work all combined I found that if you do commit to a date then you're constantly scrambling and putting sticky notes and putting arrows and trying to remember all that you need to get done in all the various weeks so that's my little tip I hope that made sense to you so wait to put the date in again this is why I've gotten away from your typical planner and just started creating my own so they're probably all the planner people probably are kind of like me for that tip but that is one thing that I found be very very helpful so I hope it will help you to put some in the US history so this year we are learning US history we will not read all of these books that is just absolutely impossible but I will mix it up

Channel: Kristi Clover

Views: 241,789

Rating: 4.9177771 out of 5

Keywords: organization, Homeschool, organizing, organize, how to, stuff, home, school, prep, preparation, education, smoother, subjects, tutorial, files, video, tips, systems, system, planning, plan, papers, curriculum, run, room, simple, help, project, Blog (Industry), vlog, Video Blog (Website Category), Homeschooling (Religious Practice), folders, binder, crate, folder, mom, how, to, tools, material, materials, supplies, note, book, homeschooling, how to homeschool, homeschool curriculum

Id: mq9NNKmKYdk

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2015