Homeschoolers, both new and seasoned, want answers for keeping their homeschool days organized without a lot of extra work. A new year is looming and homeschool families will soon be planning new curriculum for a new school year. Using our homeschool binder for organization has helped not only with getting our lessons done when planned but also with keeping our portfolios current.
Homeschool Binder Organization
*This post is part of my being an ambassador for BookShark, in exchange I received curriculum, however, I am honest in my posts and review of them. This post also contains affiliate links.*
I started using my homeschool binder organization a couple years ago when we started using BookShark. It came about because the BookShark D-ring binder was slightly too big for my little hutch where I stored our homeschool papers.
It turned out using a smaller binder for organizing our homeschool papers was the best idea I could have had. It streamlined our school organization.
I recommend using a 1 1/2-inch binder to get started, and you can always get a larger one later if you need it. I like this size since makes it easy to take the binder with us if we want to do school outside the house.
Homeschool Binder Pages Organization
How to Organize Homeschool Binder
The front page of my binder is my reason for homeschooling. It reminds me on rough days why we are homeschooling. Why we choose to homeschool our children with secular curriculum when it could be easier to to send them to public school.
Record Keeping
There are many different things that you may wish to keep in your homeschool binder depending on what you are required to keep and report to your school board.
Here are the possibilities:
- goals and plans for the year — outcomes to reach
- schedule — what you work on each day
- attendance
- reading list
- field trips
- extra-curricular activities
Make Your Own Comic Book – Comic Book Pages
Homeschool Subject Binder
Using dividers clearly labeled for each section, you can quickly flip to the subject that you are going to be working on next. Within each subject use dividers to separate each child’s work and instructions unless they are working on them together.
- history — social studies in Canada
- language arts
- math
- science
- art
- health
Portfolio Binder Organization
Reporting to our school board last year was the least stressful reporting yet, because I had my homeschool binder organization, everything was ready to go. Once a month I sit down with our binders and move four weeks of IG pages from our huge BookShark binder to my smaller planner binder.
I move the work samples I want to keep for each child to their portfolio binders. Simple and not time consuming– just the way I like it.
Children’s Binder Organization
Each child has their own binder with their worksheets it. Similar to the my homeschool binder, the subjects are separated by a divider to make finding each subject easy.
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Bonus Organization Tip
One other thing that I have done this year is to use a hashtag specific to our family (that no one else is going to use hopefully) and use it when sharing on Instagram. For those fun moments each month that I might not document in the moment I can search that hashtag for easy remembering.
Edit: We have started to use a digital portfolio in our homeschool now, when I report to the school board I do so digitally. I scan work samples to email, and I ready I keep our periodic log in Google Drive.
Now, I keep out portfolios in my Drive instead of keeping paper copies. This was helpful when moving and not wanting to bring “extra” with us.
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