Keeping My Home School 6th Grader Organized

We will be starting our third year homeschooling this July. This past year we lost papers and our list of assignments that we wrote down. Thankfully, I also keep digital copies or our plans.

Since we are having a break between 5th and 6th grade, I brainstormed ideas that I hope will help keep everything together and organized. My plan is also to help give him more independence by giving him his assignments for the entire week instead of the day.

I have my planner that I will share at another time that is now planned out till September.

I purchased him a planner from Target. It is a 2020-21 Weekly/Monthly Planner from Blue Sky. It starts in July, which is perfect.

The monthly part of his calendar I have added important dates and figured he can go in and add anything he wants with it.

In the weekly part, I listed his assignments for the week on the correct day. We are only going to home school Monday - Thursday, leaving Friday's open for co-op, trips to visit family, field trips, or catch up days. Every Sunday or Monday morning I will update his planner with the new assignments.

I do not have his language arts in his planner yet, I need to dive more into the curriculum calendar for that before I add it. (You can read more about our curriculum choice for 6th grade HERE)

Another way I am helping him stay organized is he will have a folder system that has all the papers he needs for the week in their assigned day. I did a post yesterday on how I created this folder system.

I didn't take any photos, but his completed work will go into a regular 3 ring binder to make setting up his portfolio at the end of the year. I will add his work to that just to help keep myself organized and less work at the end of the year.

How do you keep your family organized? I am always looking for more ideas!

DIY Folder Organzier for Homeschool

My soon to be 6th grader has trouble keeping track of papers that he needs to for the day. I tend to hand him his papers first thing in the morning with his list of assignments. Since he is older, I wanted to give him more responsibility. He will be getting his assignments for the whole week every Monday. I will be posting tomorrow about my plans for keeping him organized.

Today, I wanted to share this super easy and affordable DIY Folder Organizer.

I remember one of my teachers having something very similar to this in case we lost assignments and I wanted to recreate my own. Do you ever remember anything from your childhood that is so ordinary but clever? This was one of those moments.

What you'll need:

File Folders
Tape

Yarn (not pictured)

Directions:

Line up your folders.

Tape your folders together -- I wished I had colorful duck tape or folders to make it more personal but this is what we have on hand.

Add a loop of yarn on the back with tape.

Hang.

I did add the days of the weeks to the top of the folders to coordinate with the papers he will need for that day. You can personalize this however you want. Again, I wished I had some different color folders or duck tape.

What is your tip for keeping your kiddo organized?

How I Am Staying Orgainized This Homeschool Year

This is our second year homeschooling. Last year, I was pretty organized but I wanted to be more organized to help us stay on track. 

We are doing Build Your Library: Level 5. Thankfully, it is pretty much all laid out for us.We are also using Teaching Textbooks and Winning with Writing.  (None of these links are affiliate links.) 

I wanted to have everything we were doing written out and in one place for the week. Scattered Squirrel has these printable and so many other amazing ones for free. Each month, I print out 4 and write down the month, 3 hole punch it, and add it to our binder. 

After we finish a lesson, my son will go over with a highlighter on the completed assignment. We are on week 2 but we moved a head on Child of the Longhouse because he couldn't put it down. He enjoyed that story. 

This is just a small way that is helping us stay on track and organized. I plan on sharing more organization tips in the future. 

Question of the Day: Would you be interested in my son and I reviewing the books he read. I believe it would be fun way to share the child's and parent's view point. Please let me know in the comments.