How to Prepare for Homeschool: Get Organized

The homeschool year is almost upon us and every home-school parent is feeling the pressure of getting prepared. If I had one piece of good advice in getting prepared for the homeschool year, it would be to GET ORGANIZED. Everything else about the start of your school year and throughout the school year, will go much more smoothly if you get everything organized before you start.

So what exactly should you do to get organized? If you are a first time homeschooler, or you homeschool but need to get organized, then you must have a space for everything. This will make things go more quickly and smoothly throughout your school days because you won't be wasting time looking for that missing book, folder or pencil.

First, decide on a specific place for books and organize them by class or student or both. Book shelves, cabinets, desks and closets with shelves are all wonderful places to organize and store school books. I personally have a homeschool closet with shelves. I have separate shelves for books we use everyday, books we use on occasion, and activities, games and manipulatives. I organize the every day books according to class, the occasional books according to subject, and the activities, games and manipulatives according to type.

Next, have a specific place for school supplies. If your students have desks, have them keep the supplies they will personally use in their desks. Help younger students organize their desks so they have specific places for each item and can easily find them when needed. My daughter has a desk with her pencils, erasers, rulers, glue, calculator, colored pencils, markers, crayons, etc. in specific places in specific drawers. Many items are further organized by containers like plastic pencil boxes and plastic containers with lids. This makes it very easy to find whatever items she needs for a class. You need to keep general school supplies used by all you students in a specific place too. We have a standing cabinet with two shelves where we keep computer school games and supplies not specifically kept in her desk.

You should also have folders for each class that will have worksheets or loose paper assignments of any kind. Have your students write their names and the name of the class on the folder. Any papers for those classes should be kept in their folders. This is a great way to keep track of assignments. You can use one side of the folder for assignments they need to do and the other for assignments they have completed that you need to correct.

It is also beneficial to write names and classes on any notebooks that will be needed. My daughter loves to pick what color notebook she wants to use for each class and then write the class and her name on each one. This makes things easier for her throughout her school day because she doesn't have to memorize which color notebook went with what class. If a notebook gets separated from the book it goes to, all she has to do is look at the cover to know which one it is.

Now it's time to organize your school day. Take a moment and think about how you want your school day to go. What time do you want to start? What order do you want to do the classes in? What time would you like to stop for lunch? What time would you like to be done? Take all of these things into consideration and then write down a tentative schedule. Looking at it written down will help you be able to see if it is realistic or not. Figuring out a realistic schedule for your school day will be very helpful. Transition from one class to the next will go much more smoothly and quickly if you know what you're doing next. Just remember that this schedule isn't written in stone and if you need to make changes along the way, that's okay. The point is to help things go more smoothly, not add stress because you can't stick to the schedule you made.

Once you get everything organized and have a schedule planned, you should feel much more ready to start the homeschool year. Then you can take a breath and enjoy the last days of summer.