Homeschool Discoveries

We’re currently on a six week summer break from most of our formal academic work.  And wow, it has been hard to get in the mindset to think about anything homeschool-related at all, whether it be for this blog or for planning and getting organized for next year!   But I also know that now (when we are on break, and really all summer long until we get back to a “full” school schedule) is the time to get all my ducks in a row for a great start to the next school year!

The past few summers I’ve had to spend major time organizing our school room/supplies.  This year, we are still fresh from a big re-do of our school room back in January:

I only wish it still looked that clean! (The only down side I’ve found so far to the Trofast drawer set up is that big, flat open space…it’s a clutter magnet!).    The main thing I need to do is clear out this past year’s stuff and possibly make some labels so everyone knows whose stuff is where! Our art and game cabinets need a bit of “touch up” organizing — but they are still pretty fresh from our big January clean-out as well.

I do have two other areas that need my organizing attention this summer: Our non-fiction kids books and my electronic files.  I tried to get some of our non-fiction books organized into Ikea magazine holders last summer.  But I never got the magazine holders labeled, and the result was those books didn’t get used very much.  I need to move out of the way some history books we probably won’t use this year to make more space, and find a better system (or maybe just labels on the old system) for the rest of the non-fiction books.

My electronic files need the most organization of all.   You know all those great free PDF-format printables and Ebooks?  Or those $1 sale files from the Scholastic teachers express store? Or the great deals that currclick offers? I must have dozens of those files, spread out between two computers, my iPad and even still sitting on Currclick and Scholastic’s servers, having never been downloaded.  A few files are nicely in a big folder labled “homeschooling” and some are just in the general “downloads” folder along with every other random thing we’ve downloaded in the last couple years.   I’m not making good use of the files I have, and I have nearly re-purchased a file for a second time that I had already paid for once (because it looked just as good the second time!).

So one of my challenges to myself this summer is to take care of this organizational disaster.  I think I need to condense everything to one place, possibly with file folders labeled by subject area and maybe even a master list of files I have purchased.   And now that I’ve told the world I’m going to do it, I’ll need to follow through and actually do it! 😉

To see what other bloggers are writing about for the letter O, visit “Blogging through the Alphabet” at Ben and Me!