Rick and I spent a bit of time rearranging our front room to make the classroom space more usable and separate from the toys.  Last year we often had to spend a fair amount of time getting the toys out of the way before we could sit at the desks or on the floor to do some schoolwork.  I wanted that obstacle out of our way this year.

I also set up a binder system in efforts to keep track of what we were doing each day/week and have a place to hold all the printouts or game pieces we would be using for each activity.  That was also a problem last year…keeping things in too many different places and not being able to find them when I needed them.  I have been using the binder system for a few weeks now and I have reused my weekly schedule and it’s activities a couple of times because we have been having a lot of other activities come up.  But that’s the way we plan to do things, we’re not staying home on a beautiful day just because the schedule says we are supposed to be studying lakes and rivers of China or place value!

Each boy has a journal, Simon and I write back in forth in his and Owen has one to write or draw in whenever he feels the urge.  Sometimes I will write in my own journal while Simon writes in his.  Last year he told me he liked writing in school more than at home because other people were writing at the same time, so I told him I was happy to write in my journal when he wrote in his.  His journal has a bookmark with our names on opposite sides so we can put it in the page we are working on and let the other know it’s their turn to write.

It is my hope that we will hold on to at least some of this organization for a few months.  None of us are very good at keeping up with systems it seems.  I used to be really good at it.  If I’m doing it for someone else or a job, I still am, but somehow in my own home I am not very good at keeping up with my bright idea systems!