Our HS Series: Babs, The Binder System

Meet Babs, (aka "Big Ass Binder System) hence "BABS" in polite company ;)

She is the frame work behind our school. Shes my Personal Assistant, she's everything. Without her, the sky would fall, and Chicken Little would be screaming her (him? it?) little head off.

Although we have moved on a little from her, we still use her, she's just more "streamlined" (more about that in a later post)

We'll start from the most important bits.

These are my "guides". I have been known to clutch these in a death-like grip. They are mine. Anyone touching them knows the universe may and will implode around them *jokes*.

To the left (blue) is the "Weekly Guide" This holds the schedule for the week, and all associated worksheets. The Middle (green) that very egocentrically has "Miss Edumacated" branded on it, is my Teachers Guide/Reference (hey, I like my name! :p ) binder. The one to the right (flowery brown) is my science Binder, which contains most of the Teacher stuff for science (so at least I *appear* to know what I am doing!)

Let's show a bit more about them.

This is my terrible cursive writing on the tabs of the Teachers/Reference Folder.
Tabs I have are:
Calendar: Everyday stuff/notes for trips/DH's work schedule
Supply Lists: Contains what is says, all the supply lists from curriculums
Movie Lists: Lists for Science, General, and History
Library List: I put everything together here and this helped me use my local librarys online Lists (I created Weeks 1-36 with them, then added appropriate books, all I have to do is check them all and hold them near the week I need them. I keep these are they are a backup hardcopy in case the library loses my lists.
History: Has various references/teacher cheat sheets, review cards etc
ABCs: Bits from our Pre-K curriculum that can't be organized by week
VIP/Misc: This has a protector sheet behind it and holds all my membership/support groups/subscriptions/receipts etc.

Here for example is a page from the "Supply Lists" tab, notice all the crosses/marks, I do mark-up my stuff! lol.

 
Now onto science:

 
My Science Binder has tabs for the different "threads" so a General/Overview, Animals, Human Body & Plants. All my teacher stuff and Lapbook components go in here.

Now back to that lovely binder shelf, or more specifically this part:

 
These are my binders that hold "all" of the schedules and worksheets. There are Six binders, each with six weeks worth of work in them, and each, originally named from 1-6.

 
And they each have tabs in them labelling the weeks with all the stuff behind it, so I can just grab a new week and plonk it into my "Weekly Guide" Binder.

Heres a little look see at the schedule I made up (used excel for weekly schedule pages and word for notes pages. We have 3 "schedule" pages per week. One Core, One LA, and One Electives, plus the "notes" pages. (Don't have a picture of Core page, but its roughly the same as the electives page).

 
This is the Language Arts page, its a little hard to see, but the vertical rows are colour co-ordinated with the Pre-K LA. So when I glance at what Atlas is doing I can just glance for the same colour down below and see what I can give to the littlies, to occupy them, if need be.

 
This is the electives page, the bottom bit just says that the littlies follow along (for both this & cores) if they want to.

And these are the "notes" pages behind the schedule. They are divided by day, then further by subject, for stuff I have to explain further about.

Heres a close-up:

Lastly, we were doing 1 Chapter of SOTW a week, which meant a few chapters would be left over. I just put the extra chapters in a display book, to do over the holidays:

So thats Part 1 of "Our Homeschool Series". Stay Tuned for further Parts!

And Happy Planning!

xxx
Miss Ed.

Re-organizing & Getting Ready for the New School Term

These days are flying by!

Our new school year will begin 21st May.

I've cleared the schedule for the next month until then to do cleaning (ignored whilst planning, so house is a bomb-site), deep cleaning & maintenance, re-arranging and re-organizing.

I love this idea. The kids know we start school in roughly a month, we've stopped any unit studies/natural learning we had going (although they still learn amazing things every day), and they understand they are helping me get ready for the new school year. They haven't even made a fuss about me slowly taking away all the toys!

I've finished the library (which i'll admit, amidst planning and spreading out on the floor in there, I made the room a mess a couple of times!

Heres the summary of the overhaul to the library:

- Completely cleared & cleaned shelves & cupboards
- Labelled EVERYTHING. lol. Labelled all the shelves, filing cabinet draws and the art cupboard
- Cleared out all the stuff that didn't belong in said drawers & cupboards (what the? TP Holder? 3M Sticky things.....OH so THATs where my otterbox iphone holder went!
- Collected up every book in the house wiped any covers that needed it, and put all books on appropriate shelves
- Recycled books past their prime (sorry kids, Lola & Charlie are falling to pieces)
- Put board books and plain silly kids books (heres your simpsons colouring book Chaos) back into the kids room.
- Put everything back into appropriate cupboard area
- Cleared middle bookshelf for all enrichment/extra activity stuff
- Put return book basket back ontop of art cabinet (temporarily filled with misc craft supplies till I get some organizing baskets etc)

And you know what? I had NO reason to complain! I have PLENTY of room in my little library! I have four empty filing cabinets ready to re-fill with Art Supplies, History/Geo Supplies, Craft Supplies and Science stuff. In my art cabinet there is now room for the pile of scrap paper (all paper before was in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, loose and was just everywhere.), pile for the folders/laminating pouches etc, and an empty slot for the copy paper once I release it from my "clutch" (currently under computer table in my bedroom). Bottom shelf has been cleared for misc/more craft supplies, and on the other side I have a clear file crate with suspension folders holding a rainbow of construction paper (and my photo paper at the back). Also managed to fit my year plans into the top shelf of the bookshelf.

I'm SO excited, I actually have a workable library with loads of room :D

Next up, I have started on the loungeroom, so once I clear, and clean that tornado of a room, I figured out what to do with that weird shape of our "loungeroom" (our house was originally one not really meant for kids, so the lounge is a mini L shape thats very odd, I have an expanse of narrow room (or wide hall) back to the library. I'm going to make this into a Nature Area! :D We're studying biology/life science this year, so we're going to be having a little area to congregate our nature supplies,put all our critters, and its also going to be a little waldorf-inspired play area for collected nature supplies (think nature table/shelves, waldorf playscape, seasonal tables, that sort of thing) It'll give me something to do with all of these wicker baskets I have collected to (everyone keeps GIVING them to me for some reason :/ LOL)

My plans are to get the Dino-scape/cardboard playset up tommorrow night (pics!) and I'll also hopefully find somewhere they have them in stock so I can link.

Right....enough procrastinating (although in my defence I am waiting for the vacuum cleaner to charge up again :p) back to work for me.

P.S. Yes, will get pics of school areas, once they are stocked, right now, they are looking empty till DH raids the postman :p

xxx
Miss E.

Planning & Organising...The Circle of Life

I've had a few people PM me in one of the many forums I visit, in hopes that I will have that "perfect" planning/organising/scheduling solution for them.

I'm afraid I probably don't

I'm good for ideas, but won't be able to come up with a solution for your unique situation, why? Because only you can do that.

The fact of the matter is, NO-ONE will have a perfect planner system that will work for every single year of their child/ren's homeschooling journey. They may have one that they "make do" with for the whole of the cycle, if its not in them to come up with something different or change it.

Because your children & you, all change throughout the homeschooling journey. Just because a particular curriculum or planner may work for you this year, does not mean it will work next year. In fact, in most cases, it won't. It's in us to evolve, change & re-arrange, so this comes across in our learning styles and in the way we organize.

Last year we went with the workbox/filebox/crate system. And this worked brilliantly, for that year, if you'll remember we were also using Sonlight, already planned out, and I could just dump the appropriate sheets into that weeks folder. This year, I started to plan that way, only to realize, I just had too many sheets in each weeks folder, I am putting together my own whole curriculum from different curriculums/resources. The sheets were getting bent, the box wasn't holding up to the weight and it was just generally starting to be annoying.

This year we are going with a binder system ala Sonlight style. I think this will work quite well (I will be photo-blogging next weekend on the whole binder system, so you'll have more info then.

What about next year? Well I can tell you now, the binder system probably won't work for us then. Next year I will have 1 in preschool, 1 in Kindergarten/Prep & 1 in 2nd Grade. The Binder will just be too all over the place, everything won't fit in unless I have about 10 binders, and it will just be higgledy-piggledy. My initial plan thinking now, will probably be to mostly use Proclick Binding to make whatever subjects into individual books. I will probably have one folder for stuff like pre-k/kinder stuff. I will also pro-click the lesson planner. So everything will be via child & subject, then student & Teachers manuals

And What about the year after that? Well....thats quites a whiles away :p But since by then, the children can really start having individual subjects and not relying on me to initiate each subject (the youngest will be in prep/kinder by then) I will probably get on the Workbox/drawer wagon and follow that. or individual weekly books, or student binders etc.

Right now, all subjects are pretty much teacher intensive as my kids are young. I have to hand everything out, explain everything, and generally lead the whole herd through the day :p. So as such, I have to look at ideas best meant for the "teacher" and not directed towards the student.

The Point being, don't get frustrated if your current planning isn't working out. It happens to the best of us, and your system will always be evolving! I think probably the best chance you have of finding a "perfect" planner is finding someone in a similar situation (curriculum wise) and with similarly (is that a word? hmmm...dictionary time after this!) aged children, and see what they are using.

Try to remember what styles you are currently using, as this most affects your end planner. (e.g. if you are using something like AAR, a workbox system isn't going to work out very well, unless every drawer is filled with "lesson with mum" :D lol )

Good luck with your journey!

xxx
Miss Edumacated

Why I haven't posted for a few days...

I just missed Wordless Wednesday, which would of explained it without writing. I have been snowed under with doing the final notes for my planning sheets (basically the final bit before plonking everything into folders and pronouncing myself done).

Unfortunately this involves a great amount of desk space.......oh and apologies for the picture, I won't be getting a new camera till next wednesday, so this one has been take with my iphone.

Yep. Thats half a giant folding table (the kind they set-up for markets or impromptu meetings :p ) You don't want to see the other half....no, trust me on this. I think I have enough energy drinks to create a life size pyramid. Plus 2 bottles of tomato sauce....because, yeah, there just essential on your desk.

So once I find the table again, I will post more...I promise :D

xxx
Miss Edumacated

How do you do it all?

This is a question I have been asked many, many times. We may only be "new" to formal homeschooling (1 yr) but after planning this year, and the things we got through last year with two littlies hanging on, everyone seems to want to know.

After the last PM today, I decided to blog about it.

Answer is.....I don't!

The "ideal" solution for us would be for me to make my own curriculum, completely from scratch, but unless I have a year between each "schoolyear" and no children around, that is not going to happen!

What we do (and so you don't think I am totally crazy, I have seen a few other homeschoolers who do this) is yes, I buy mutiple curriculums/resources for one subject. This may not be the most money-efficient means (well, its definitely not) but it allows me to customise a subject to our liking with a minimum of fuss.

For the subject at hand, I gather all the materials/curriculums/resources I purchased. Then I usually have one item/curriculum as the spine/base (for History this is Story of the World, for Science its Elemental Science) then anything else I rearrange according to the layout of the spine item. Once that is done, I simple go through each mini subject and pick and choose the books,activities etc to suit our current set-up/year.

Most of the items I purchase are teacher manuals/digital curriculums etc, stuff that can be re-used for reference/activities/curriculums throughout their schooling. We follow "very loosely" the WTM way i.e. the 4 year rotation of history. So anything we don't use this year, can be used on our next two rotations (yes, believe it or not, some of the stuff I purchased now can be used for the child in year 9).

So *thats* my secret. I don't actually do it all, and if I did, I would probably have gone completely mad by now! :D Its just a matter of holding tight to how you want the final subject to turn out. For us right now, videos and arts & crafts trump everything, as with the combined ages of the kids, this is what can be done/viewed by all, and enjoyed by each ones individual learning style. After that comes games & books, last is worksheets. My children are not very worksheet styled, so experiments, documentaries, art, craft and DIY games work much better to help them retain that knowledge.

Before we have even begun the year, my daughter is entranced with all that is *egyptians*, this came from 3 things. The start of it was a simple papyrus picture in a frame I picked up, she wanted to study it for ages, then, by pure accident, I started watching a documentary on King Tut, she was absolutely fascinated, and asked more about it, where I led her to an online game about Egyptian Mummies. Now she's become so obssessed she even wants me to make her dibetes logbook into Egyptian themed complete with "an Egyptian flat person on the front and hieroglyphics inside and LOTs of gold mummy!". I have promised her a trip to the museum in the City towards the middle of the year, when they have an exhibition on Egyptian mummies on, she's counting down the days.

So yes, my advice is to not do it all, if a curriculum/program suits you fully, stick with it. I have found most programs in their unaltered states don't suit us, as we require a very vigourously interactive program.

So hopefully your not thinking I am supermum now!

xxx
Miss E.

Planning & Organising - File Crates

**Due to the fact I am not going to get my lesson plan photo-blog done anytime soon, I thought I would copy/paste a reply I gave on another forum, hopefully this should assuage your appetite**

We started homeschooling year round. We just take a break whenever life intrudes lol.

I use Dawns File Crate system with a twist. I have 3 archive boxes & a couple of presentation protector folders.

1st box - Weeks & Folders labelled Weeks 1- 36 I put two folders in each hanging file. I put all our lessons for that week in the folder.

2nd Box - Has Daily Hanging Files & Folders Day 1 - 20 (4 weeks worth)

3rd box - Is another Daily one for the next lot 1-20 (another 4 weeks)

about every 6 weeks I organize and sort the next lot of stuff into the folders for those days (taking the two final weeks of days to the side).

I avoid naming anything by Weekdays (Monday etc) everything is jst duly named week 20 - day 2 etc.

The presentation folders contain stuff that won't fit into the 36 week schedule (like SOTW lol) so for SOTW the final few chapters left over, I sort by chapter into a presentation folder, these are to do once we have finished the 36 weeks.

Once we are nearing the end of our curriculum, I start planning the next one. So I still do the 36 weeks, we just have those as "formal" and the rest as "informal"

I take time off whenever we need it.

We also follow a kind of loop system. So only when we are finished with day 1 fully, do we move to day 2, this mean when life intrudes it may take us a few days to "do" day 1. I don't just let it fall off, forget it and move to the next day

I've been meaning to write up a proper post about my lesson planning for a while but I never get time to do up the pics to explain it properly. But hopefully that isn't too confusing, and has helped some

I love to combine!

I'm still working on that Lesson plan post! We have a valuation due soon (hopefully) so I have been amidst a very large cleanup project to make our house look as spiffy as possible!

And I got a pressie!....A beautiful big, on wheels, whiteboard. Sooo pretty! We are using it for OPGTR right now, instead of index cards.

I ended up scrapping my curriculum posts, as I figured out it gets changed A LOT before I actually start planning it lol.

So what do we like in a curriculum? Well, I found I am not good with choosing "one" curriculum, or am I good at making one up from scratch, but I am quite adept at combining them for our own needs.

We love stuff that is very interactive and multi-platform. A nice book as the spine, coupled with fun, silly activities, lots of projects, some fun lapbooks, as well as software and movies. We like the whole she-bang. I think if a child is exposed to a subject via a variety of formats (TV, workbook, books, hands on activities) they are more likely to retain that information, than if you just use one source for your subject. So ultimately, at least for the bigger subjects (history, maths, science etc) our only option is to combine and supplement.

A word about combining/supplementing a program. I NEVER fully combine a program unless that program is quite lax. Putting two curriculum's together and doing everything is likely to result in burnout, not enough time, or the kids end up hating the subject. What I DO, is use ONE item as the spine, anything I add is tiny supplementals. I get very picky and choose (even from upto 5 separate curriculum's) what stuff from the others we would like /get time, to do. I make sure the program at the end of my planning is cohesive. I also make sure each day IS NOT choc-a-block full of stuff to do for that subject.

i.e. I am using Story of the World Volume 1 as my spine for history. I have multiple extra reference books, library books, History Odyssey Ancients, Myths, Marvels and Maps, and the SOTW Activity Guide. I have meshed all these together. BUT we have been really picky of what we plan to use from each separate resource, and quite often there is a day or two (on a couple of weeks 3-4days) a week where there is no activities/extras. Just because you can/want to combine a program does not mean that you have to use "every last resource" of it to get your moneys worth. Had I been good at ideas, I could of gotten away with just the SOTW book, and come up with my own. Most of these resources I also plan to use the next time round through history.

Remember, in the end its all about making learning fun for your individual child, and spending some time just watching them grow up!

SOTW Correlation Chart

As promised

I originally had the Usborne & Kingfisher bits listed, but since they are listed according to pages in the Activity Book, I decided to pass on doing it.

I also originally had Biblioplans Crafts & Cool History Supplements I was going to add, but it was too hard and too confusing to secularize these, and would of left only a little amount of crafts/ideas left. We will use their stuff (since I already now have it) for Bible Supplements & Extra Activities.

So, for the correlation we are left with:

- Story of the World Volume 1 (by chapter) (SOTW)
- A Child's History of the World (by chapter) (CHOW)
- A Little History of the World (by chapter) (LHW)
- History Odyssey Ancients Level 1 (by Lesson) (HO Ancients L1)
- Myths Maps & Marvels - with Prehistory (By Bringing Up Learners) (by Week) (MMM)

I noticed there was no real correlation charts, and when they were, they were based on the spine of another program rather than SOTW being the spine. So, hopefully,this will help someone out there.

Its all done via resources from other sites, looking at the programs myself etc. There may be inaccuracies (gosh, I hope not, since I am using it myself!) and some parts referred to more than one chapter of SOTW, so I have put in the best chapter to suit the overall picture. Thus, I suggest you re-check these yourself.

I did the file in Google Docs as a spreadsheet, then saved as a pdf, it looks absolutely shocking, but it gets the job done lol. Just warning you!

Here's the link:

http://www.4shared.com/office/0N3h5S8fba/SOTW1_Comp.html

Feel free to make it prettier, then maybe you could go one extra and send the pretty file back to me LOL! One day I will download OpenOffice (150mb!) and then I will make uber-pretty files!

xxx

Miss E.

Lesson Planning

To be honest, figuring out how to do this and what layout for next year is giving me a headache!

BUT....I thought I would tell you how we currently organise our plans we do have. We currently use Sonlight P3/4 & P4/5.

P3/4 IG - Is just a little book advising what stories to read, separated into 3 terms I think it is, and a big list, with lots of people thinking back "yonder" in speech bubbles about what they did with their kids. This IG may work for some people, but for me it was higgledy-piggledy, and overwhelming to look at. So what I ended up doing is opening the very simple "word pad" program. I made 36 "pads" each named Week 1, Week 2 all the way to week 36. Then within those I put Monday down to Friday (my mistake, if I ever did it up again, I would put day 1-5 in each pad instead, I don't like "naming" days) Under each day, I put a Story and an activity to do from the list in the IG.

Here's an example below:

MONDAY

Goodnight Moon (Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics) w/ Lapbook Activity

TUESDAY

Baby Says (Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics) w/ Build with Blocks

WEDNESDAY

Noah's Ark
Ask Questions about the book. Count, Name & Make Animal Noises.
Blanket over table and "save" the animals.

THURSDAY

If you give a Mouse a Cookie (Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics)
Bake Cookies and give them with milk for a snack.

FRIDAY

George Shrinks (Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics)
ACTIVITY FREE

This list was then printed and put into the appropriate weeks folder (more on that in a minute). This enabled me to have it a bit more organised since I have more then 1 child (I have 3 under 6). I try to keep the activities quite simple, I do a quick google, and if nothing appropriate comes up after a quick search, I leave it "activity free"

P4/5 - We are using this as a Kindergarten program, so we added Language Arts K, and some other books from other publishers (like H/S Aust Social Studies, Singapore Math Preschool year). What I did was have the big giant binder set-up exactly how they tell you to set it up...looked at it and went "ahhhh p-shaw" it was MASSIVE. Looking at it makes you want to go eat grass or something else not requiring brain-age LOL. Since it was already separated into weeks, with the answer keys at the back, I then found Dawns File Crate System WOOHOO. I liked the general gist of it, but not the "naming" of months. She uses Seasons, and general ideas and makes up her own things as time goes along, she also is quite involved with the community and events like Lent, none of this applies to us, we homeschool year round and just concentrate on a 36 week formal curriculum, and after that if we have had much breaks, then we finish bits that go on longer than the specified 36 weeks (like next year SOTW goes for 42+ chapters) before moving on to the next 36 lot of curriculum.

So I got 18 hanging folders, the cardboard archive boxes (they are cheap and we needed them for a couple of other things, plus you could also make decorating the outside of them a craft for each year), and 36 folders. Each hanging folder has two weeks in it (Wk1&2 all the way to Wk 35 & 36) and then appropriate labelled weeks folders goes in.

Then all I do is put the appropriate Core Week in, the printed P3/4 schedule, any other loose bits I have and the answer keys for the appropriate week (yep I also put the answer keys in there.....I really hated that binder ROFL, the only thing left in it is the divider pages and some phonics keys that apply to mutiple weeks). Once the whole kit and caboodle of stuff was in those folders (all loose, no order to it, just in the appropriate weeks files) I set down to the next task at hand.

Since Sonlight is already "planned" the next bit is as hard as it would be to others whom plan on a daily basis lol. Next I have 2 more archive boxes, each has 20 hanging files in it, first box has D1 -D20, 2nd box has SD1-SD20 (S-econd D-ay, yep not very original) in each of those is another folder named the same as the hanging file.

Still with me? lol. Next I take the Weeks 1-8 folders & hanging files from my original archive box. I place Week 1&2, and Week 3&4, still in their hanging files, to the back of the first box. And 5,6,7 & 8 into the second box.

Then I start the real planning! I also have Handle on the Arts Supplements so I print these out for the appropriate weeks I am planning for.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 (I'm outta oomph and need some caffeine!) I will put up some pics over the next few days too!