A Peek into Preparing an Entire Homeschool Year

I’ve already written the series on homeschool planning a year at a time, and now you can have a peek into the homeschool printing all-at-one-time process. It’s not always pretty. But I am always so happy in mid October and February and every other term break that I already did it all at one go so I don’t have to think through it all again every six weeks.

But it’s a lot of paper. And we don’t even do that much paperwork. But when you stack an entire year’s worth (including coloring pages to keep hands busy while listening), it can make a pretty daunting pile.

Here we have various math drill sheets lined out in 2 rows (one per math student) and 6 piles in each row (one per term). These are basic skill review sheets, mostly Calculadder sheets, so I don’t need to know how far along they’ll be half-way through the year. No matter how much or how little progress they make, they will need to review their addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts.

Then I piled them up, paper-clipped them, labelled them with a post-it, and here they await being deposited in the appropriate file folder.

I did the same with handwriting sheets for 3 students, printing a copy of Beautiful Handwriting for Children for each (manuscript for the preschooler & cursive for the older two) and some practice sheets (and more letter & number practice for the preschooler) I made with StartWrite.

I was also busy putting our Circle Time memory work into page protectors and compiling a memory work binder for each student.

All the pages for our binders we’ll use over the course of the year are now page-protected and ready-to-pull.

I still have coloring sheets to copy and sort and file, blank maps to print, independent work pages (Latin review & generic notebooking pages) to collate, and Bible lesson materials to sort & file. Then there will be labeling the books and allowing them to make their grand entrance into circulation after the children have cleared out and washed down their desks.

So, my back office area is still clearly a chaotic staging area.

I do love a big organization project, though. This is actually my favorite part; I find it energizing. I need to be better about energy and enthusiasm for the actual day-to-day teaching part, alas.