Organizing our school

It's the time of year that I clean out all the files of the past year and re-organize in preparation for a new start. Yesterday, I spent the entire day working in the homeschool closet! But the results were worth it and I feel much better now that the job is done! I have two file cabinets in there - a drawer for each of teh following: homeschool subjects, family stuff, church things, and homeschool co-ops. On top of the file cabinets, I have racks of files for easy access for Joel and Ivy to put their papers in during the week. Some of these papers will later go into their portfolios. In this closet, we also have drawers of markers, pencils, color books for Jaden, art supplies, etc. The top part of the closet holds all our videos. We keep a ton of stuff in there!!!



Then I moved to the rest of the school room/family room. I tidied up the book shelves,and got my TOG volumes back in order. I emptied the student notebooks and made sure that all extra copied pages were put back in the right places in the volumes so that it is all ready for us in 4 more years! Looking at the space that my printed editions of Year 1 take on the shelves, I'm thankful that I will be using the digital edition for Year 2!!!



After everything was organized and cleaned out, moved to the next task: preparing for the upcoming school year. I love the customized booklist at Lampstand Press for my TOG books. I printed out a list of all the upper grammar and dialectic books I will need for our Year 2. Then I checked off any books we already own - always happy to see I own a few of them! Next, I went to the library site where I searched for all the books. I was very excited to find that the majority of the books we will need are in our library system. A few other books can be found in our church's library. Some of the books that are not in the library can be subsituted with other books from the "alternate" list that TOG provides. Several of those alternate books are in the library and will work for us. That only leaves us with needing to spend about $180 on additional books to use with TOG for next year. Not bad!

I printed the reading assignment pages (pages 4&5) from each week in Unit 1 to put in my binder. I really like having a printed copy of those lists so I can take them with me to the library or whatever. I also printed out the Lampstand list that includes the prices. Many times they offer the books at the same price or cheaper than Amazon, but I always compare to get the lowest price. I pencil in Amazon price lists in there too to help me compare and price everything before I order.

After I recieve the books I order, I will put a color coded sticker on the spines to help me locate them quickly and easily on the shelves. Last year, was Red, for Year 1. Books for this year will be labeled with a yellow sticker. I also write on the sticker what units the book will be used for.

Amazingly, I am very excited about the digital edition of Tapestry. I really, really like it! I love the freedom to print out what I need and never have to worry about it. No more need for page protectors! There are many things about the digital edition that are very convenient and I am having fun exploring it all! There is always a sense of excitement about the year ahead and I can hardly wait to dive in again! And Year 2, I think, will be my favorite year - I love it already!