I finally had my answer it was time to get the ball rolling! I learned alot homeschooling Pre-K and that is organization is a MUST! We moved last year in November and that kind of put a kink in our schooling... in the organizational department. I had papers everywhere! And it drove me nuts! But I had no idea what to do with them... and honestly cleaning up our school rooom for this new year I took all those papers and they now sit on the window seat in my craft room :(... gotta do something with them! But I have a plan for this new year.... I hadn't heard of this until after starting Pre-K a Portfolio... who knew! Sometimes the answer is so simple. Once they are done with their work we'll put it in a big binder. :) Nice and neat... hopefully... Now with Virtual School for Taylor I am going to have to scan her work and send it in... but I'm sure I have to keep the original copy and it will be nice to have as a keepsake too. The other problem that we had was work space. We have a big "backroom" and it is used half as a playroom and half as a school room. After moving we were still trying to figure out furniture arrangments and such. The girls were sitting at a coffee table to do work which worked fine, UNTIL Jackson became mobile. :) He would grab their work and mess it up and the girls would get very frustrated. I also couldn't sit with the girls comfortably to help them I was more hovering over them. So a bigger table was in order. Craigslist to the rescue! We found a deal! I love it! So with some rearrangements and organizing... we are ready to start!
Here is our school room.
Other view of room...
Bookshelf full of goodies! :) Books, games, curriculumn. Notice the bottom 2 shelves are empty... that's b/c of Jackson :)
I hung up cork board squares to display the weeks work and so the girls can show Daddy what they did for the day. The cubby organizer another Craiglist find and it's a great thing to have!
Chalkboard and drawers full of manipulatives and such...
I did get this idea for Pre K HERE and for teaching multiple children it's a great idea. All the girls wanted to help with the big calendar and we would take turns. But this seemed like it would work better. I made some adjustments for us and it has worked great. The girls have their own binders and like the ownership of it. I added a pocket thing to keep a pencil, scissors and glue stick. So we're not hunting for anything and they each have their own and know where it is.
So here is Taylor's School notebook. Instead of using this just for calendar time we made it a School Notebook. It holds their Calendar, supplies and folders to organize their work.
So here is Taylor's School notebook. Instead of using this just for calendar time we made it a School Notebook. It holds their Calendar, supplies and folders to organize their work.
I actually really like the idea for the calendar cause it gives them extra practice at writing numbers :)
I added folders with numbers inside them so they know what order to go in. For now it's usually something that they can do on their own. So this way when they are done with one worksheet they aren't asking me what's next Mommy and I'm looking around for their work. It's all organized and laid out the night before and they know when they are done with folder they move to the next. They love their folder work! It also helps for them to see how much work is expected for the day.
The folders is my spin of doing the WORKBOXES. If you haven't heard of them check it out! I think it's such a great idea! I did not read the book I get the concept and came up with the folders to make it work for us. I love the way it's done in the blog that I linked to and will probably change it up and do it that way eventually but for now this was a simple and cheap fix. Google workboxes for more ideas... there are all sorts of ways to do them :)
