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homeschool Organization

Homeschool Organization Hacks

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Organization can make some people want to pull their hair out. I am one of those people because I want to be organized but we have way too much stuff and I feel like our house it going to burst at the seams. Homeschooling and downsizing your house is not fun. Here are my homeschool organization hacks to get you on track.

homeschool organization hacks - tidy desk

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

I have changed how I organize our homeschool stuff so many times, which seems to align with the beginning of the school year and when we switch out the curriculum that we are using, which is not always at the beginning of the year.

Homeschool Organization Hacks

We have very limited storage in our house, which means I have cut down on the “extra” that we keep. I try to make sure that I only keep what we need out and accessible. The rest of our homeschool stuff, like lessons from previous years that I am keeping for Brookland or Gauge as they grade up, is kept in a tote in the basement.

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Homeschool Binder Organization

The best thing I ever did for organization in our homeschool was set up a homeschool binder for myself. It has everything I need in it for a specific amount of time, usually monthly, especially when using BookShark curriculum.

What’s in a homeschool binder:

  • It has the worksheets/answer sheets for the all my kids work
  • goals for the year
  • my why – the reason I am homeschooling for when things get tough
  • our period log
  • work samples that I want to keep as we do them
  • and more!

Homeschool Binder Pages Organization

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Plan Month By Month

I have been planning our homeschool lessons month by month for years rather than by the whole year as some homeschoolers may. Even month by month planning can be tricky, things are always changing on our home, for instance, Austin will now be raising her own silkie chickens.

Do you have any idea who much she is going to learn while raising her own chickens, and a breed I know nothing about? And then deciding what to do with their eggs?

Month by month planning means that I do not have to have a years’ worth of materials ready to go all the time.

Storage Spaces

The top shelves in closets and the bottom drawers in cabinets are often underused or misused. Take a look in your home. Does the top shelf hold items that could just as well be donated? Is there a bottom drawer in your home that is practically empty?

These are places where you can store your homeschool supplies.

homeschool organization hacks

Library Books

Library books always have their own area. They do not get mixed in with our own because then we end up with late fees or worse, book replacement fees.

Declutter and Tidy

I am an advocate of consistent, little-by-little decluttering, keeping a daily habit of tossing out broken things, donating unused things, and tidying up. But… a couple times a year, a deep clean is necessary to make sure that we are only keeping what we need out and in our space.

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Homeschool Binder Printables

Homeschool Binder Organization

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool Organization

Homeschool Binder Printables

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Organization somedays, could be the end of me. Trying to keep track of everything, where it is and making sure it is updated, it can be overwhelming. Then I started keeping everything in a binder one year. And then my homeschool binder was born and had become my homeschool center in a binder. These are some homeschool binder printables to get you started.

Homeschool Binder Printables

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

What is a Homeschool Binder?

A homeschool binder is where you keep everything related to your homeschool. I love having a planner, but it doesn’t hold all the things I want and need to keep track of in our homeschool which is why I have been using a binder for the last few years to keep track of everything.

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
  • lesson plans
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Reasons to Keep a Homeschool Binder

The best reason to put together your own homeschool binder is to keep everything together in one spot. I do not have to meet with a teacher or advisor but I know some homeschooling laws state that you must, this binder would be a blessing for that. Everything is always together.

I do have to report at the end of the year what we have covered so having my goals and periodic log in one place makes it easier when the time comes.

Homeschool Binder Pages Organization

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Getting Started with Your Homeschool Binder Printables

Think about what you want in your binder.

  • What are you required to keep track of?
  • What do you use everyday?
  • What do you find yourself searching for repeatedly?

I have created a set of pages to help you get started with your binder organization.

I have included different curriculum planning pages – one set includes common subjects you may be planning for, the other is blank for you to fill in your own subjects.

There is an attendance tracker, we don’t all need this, but you might want to keep track just to see how many days you are getting in.

Planning pages – Daily (hourly), weekly, and monthly. I like to know see what we are doing each week at a glance, especially if I need to move somethings around.

Goal pages. What do you want to complete for the year? Then there are monthly goal pages so you can break a big goal down into actionable tasks.

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Homeschool Binder Organization

Organized Homeschool Lesson Planning

Homeschool Planet – Online Homeschool Planner

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool Organization

Homeschool Tips for Beginners

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Deciding to start homeschooling can be scary, and exciting, and overwhelming, and the list of emotions goes on and on. I have some homeschool tips for beginners to help you out on your incredible journey. I have three main takeaways for you today as you get ready to begin homeschooling. Tips for Moms. Tips the First Year. Organization Tips.

Homeschool Tips for Beginners - 3 tips beginning to homeschool

Homeschool Tips for Beginners

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Homeschool Tips for Moms

Moms, or dads, should first head to your provincial or state education website and formalize yourself with the rules and laws for homeschooling in your province.

Each province have very different laws and regulations, and requires something different of you, for example New Brunswick just needs you to fill out a form at the beginning of the school year, very simple.

Another example is Saskatchewan where each school district is different, and you are required to register, provide educational plans, and an end of year report.

Take a deep breathe, grab a cup of tea and some books to read.
Homeschool Books I Recommend for Beginning to Homeschool
Homeschool Books for Homeschool Moms
6 Secular Books for Secular Homeschooling

Do a Facebook search for homeschool groups in your area. This is the first thing I do when we move, I want to join and talk/”meet” other homeschool families right away. This is also a great way to find used curriculum as well.

Homeschool Tips for Beginners - how to start homeschooling

Homeschool Tips – First Year

Things aren’t going to go perfectly the first year. Use the first year, or even the first two or three years, to find out what works best for you and your kids. There are so many different styles of curriculum and learning styles, that for the first year you might not land on what works for your right away, and that’s OK.

My homeschool advice is to not try to create school at home. Sometimes it’s more relaxing and enjoyable to sit on the couch with a read-aloud or even workbooks than at a desk or table. If you are enjoying it, you are more likely to stick with it long term. You can find lap desks to making working on the couch easier, and neater, we have them and use them everywhere including in the vehicle.

Homeschool Organization Tips

I like digital homeschool resources that I can print off as needed and re-use for each of my kids. But digital resources do come with their own unique organizational challenges, one being forgetting what you have, and not remembering where you stored it on your computer. This Guide to Digital Homeschool Organization might be a lifesaver for you.

What about lesson plans?

How are you going to keep track of your lessons, what you want cover each day. Some people, myself included, are paper planner people. I like writing thing out by hand. But some prefer online planner that send you email reminders, which I admit can be so very helpful like the Homeschool Planet planner, you can check out my review of here.

I try to have a very rough idea of what I want to cover for the year for each of my kids. And then break it down into how many months we’ll homeschooling so I know how much of each subject to cover each week.

For example there are 118 lessons + 17 quizzes in Teaching Textbooks Level 3. That means for 9 months of school Brookland should be doing at least 15 lessons/quizzes a month. I now see she’ll be done very soon doing a lesson or two a day because she enjoys doing it.

There are many other options for keeping track of your plans including using Google tools, the calendar app built into your phone or computer. OR maybe you unschool or interest led and just want to keep track of what your kids have done.

FREE DIGITAL PLANNER

I have a Google Slides planner – 2 page layout that you can use and edit in Google Slides to create your own digital planner. CLICK THIS LINK to get a copy of it.

3 Homeschool Tips for Beginners

Recommended Products

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool curriculum, Homeschool Mom, homeschool Organization, homeschool planning, homeschooling

Our Homeschool Room – Our Dining Room

by Ashley Mullen

We currently have our house on the market, have for over a year now, which in our area is not very long sadly. That being said, without an actual homeschool room, I like to keep the house looking, well, not like we homeschool here.

Our Homeschool Rooms - Our Dining Room

Our Homeschool Dining Room

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Do not let the appearance of our dining room fool you. I have gotten good at hiding our homeschool stuff, really good at hiding stuff. Mostly because when your house is listed for sale, you need to give a clean, open appearance.

homeschool dining room

Creating Homeschool Room Storage

Under this hutch, is cube box full of coloring books, and notebooks. And another of crayons, markers and such. I didn’t realize you can’t see it walking into the dining room, but that works for me.

homeschool dining room ideas

Junk. This is stuff my kids have made at after school programs, and on their own else where.

World, Human Body, and Earth kits.

Paper for crafts.

STEM kits.

dining room homeschool room

Oh LOOK, more junk.

Printer paper and other paper I have no idea why we own.

Printer ink. Because no homeschooler can be without backup printer ink.

Hole punch, paper cutter, and a handy take along bag.

tablets for homeschooling

Tablets. and tablet stuff like mouse pads, computer mice, headphones and tablet chargers.

Our Bookshelf/Cubby Storage:

Our Homeschool Rooms - Our Dining Room

Books about Canada.

Other stuff… including hubby’s tablet?

Math manipulatives.

Pattern blocks, magnetic letters.

Flashcards.

Puzzles.

Tablet pillows/stands.

Small hutch for everyday things:

Our Homeschool Rooms - Our Dining Room

French workbooks, math based books, language art helper from BS.

Our binders – kids work binders, my homeschool binder.

History books – including Time Traveler

My crochet hooks, my camera.

Spelling Words – Write It, Draw It, Use It. – Language Arts – ELA

$2.00
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Having a Dedicated School Room

While we don’t have a dedicated homeschool room here, I do dream that our forever home will have a library/homeschool room. It would be nice to not have to jam and shove everything into hutches.

It would be nice to have one space for all our books instead of them being spread here there and everywhere, including some packed away in totes.

The best part of homeschooling is that you don’t need to have a space just for homeschooling. You get to do school at home, learn anywhere in your home that works for you. In fact, I bought some lap trays so we have a little more freedom to work from the couch, or the truck, or wherever else we land.

Edited to Add: We have now had a dedicated homeschool room. We used it for about one week. We are too relaxed in our lessons for a dedicated room. We ended back at the dining room and in the living room using our lap desks. Why change what works right?

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Recommended Products for Homeschooling in your Dining Room

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Homeschool Binder Organization

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

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

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

$10.00
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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

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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
Homeschool Binder Organization - dividers

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.

Attendance tracker Freebie
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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.

Similar posts that you may be interested in:

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Homeschool Planet – Online Homeschool Planner

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: binder Organization, homeschool Organization, organization, portfolio Organization

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A Little About Me

I'm Ashley, a Canadian secular homeschool mom of 3, living in Nova Scotia.

I share our adventures in homeschooling and parenting.

You can usually find us at the library surrounded by books.
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