The Best Resources to Organize Your Homeschool

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Let’s face it. Nothing is worse than waking up on Monday morning with nothing prepared for the week’s homeschool. Instead of enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee, a good book, and a relaxing start to the day, you’re running frantically about the house trying to gather papers, pencils, and books. You need resources to organize your homeschool!

A Good Filing System

A good filing system will present you with prepared papers and plans for your entire homeschool year. Instead of dashing about the house, you pull the papers you need from the week’s folders. You’re ready to educate your kids.

My simple filing system needs four elements to start. You’ll need a good file storage box, hanging files, colored folders, plain folders, and a printer/copier combo. I love my printer

To summarize my system quickly:

36 hanging files are labeled from Week 1 to Week 36. Within each week’s hanging file, I have 1 colored folder labeled Teacher Info. This folder contains anything I need to teach my children. This could be teacher’s maps, teaching instructions, tests, or answer sheets. It varies subject to subject.

Behind the colored folder, each child I’m teaching has a manila folder labeled with their name. All papers the child needs are filed in their folder. These papers include the Tapestry of Grace Student Accountability pages, maps, science notebook pages, etc.

During the summer I print and file every paper we need for the school year. On Monday morning, I pull out the file storage box, grab the hanging file for the week, and hand out the appropriate pages to the kids.

No matter what happened over the weekend, we’re ready to go on Monday!

Here’s an in-depth look at my system if you’d like more information about how to creating a simple filing system for yourself!

Student Crates

The next secret of an organized homeschool is to have a place for each child to store their school supplies. In my house, this spot is a crate.

Crates are wonderful. They hide under chairs and coffee tables when the kids aren’t studying.

Crates are easy to use. The kids just grab their crate, claim a spot at the table, and start the day.

Crates are the perfect solution to where to store the kids’ school supplies in a small house.

Each child’s crate holds their textbooks, binders, pencil box, ruler, notebooks, papers, and reading books. Even the youngest children have a crate assigned to them. Everything they need is stored in the crate.

Homeschool Command Center

Let me ask you a quick question. Where do you store your teacher’s manuals? What about reference books and papers to be graded?

I bet you don’t have an assigned spot for you to manage your homeschool. You don’t have a spot to place tests that need to be graded or a shelf for homeschool books you’re reading.

The kids need a spot to store their homeschool supplies and so do you.

You need a homeschool command center.

This command center needs to be near where you homeschool. If you have a dedicated homeschool room, that’s great! Use it.

Otherwise find a desk, a counter, or a shelf you can dedicate to your needs as a homeschool mom.

Place a wire basket for kids to drop their completed tests and papers. Keep a pen holder full of pens handy and guard it. If your kids are like mine, they’ll raid your pen supply and leave you sending out search parties.

Store the books you need as reference handy and waiting for you to use in your command center.

Pick up these resources to organize your homeschool, and you’ll have everything you need for a well-run homeschool.

resources to organize your homeschool

4 Comments

  1. What curriculum do you recommend for Science and History? Grades 1-9 Began reading the book HIstories by Herodotus as part of the Classical Christian curriculum and was surprised by the content.

    1. I use Tapestry of Grace / Story of the World for my history curriculum for all my kids. Tapestry of Grace schedules the chapters of Story of the World as alternative readings so it works really well for my kids.

      As far as science, you can use nature study for the bulk of your science until the kids are in middle school. There’s also the option of Elemental Science, Real Science 4 Kids, Christian Kids Explore, and Apologia. My personal favorite is the classic Elemental Science curriculum. It’s designed off the recommendations in The Well-Trained Mind.

      I hope that gives you a starting place, Leslee! 🙂

  2. I started homeschooling my 11 year old daughter 3 months ago. She’s been setup at the dining room table this whole time. I am in the process of getting a homeschool workstation and command center setup. Your tips and ideas are going to be very helpful. Thank you!

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