organizing information
 

What do you guys use to organize your plans/curriculum, etc?

We are usually pretty unschooley, so I have documenting and such down for that, but we're going to spend a bit of time being more scheduled about some subjects. I need a better way to track what I want to do, or even to inventory what I have available, etc? Is there something where I can cross reference things?

:popcorn

Re: organizing information
 

I have one of these boxes for each subject. I primarily use them to keep Teacher's Manuals and supplementary books together. All of our current school stuff lives on a bookshelf in the living room. Games, math manipulatives, DVD's, and anything else odd-sized that doesn't fit in the bin goes directly on another shelf. Each of my kids has one of those bins as well for notebooks and papers.

I also have a couple of these file boxes. There is one hanging folder fore each week of school and an interior file for each of us. I'm a nerd, so we are color-coded. If there's something I want them to do, it goes in the file folder. Last year I got most of the year pre-planned that way. This year it didn't work out quite that way and I stuff folders as we go, primarily on the weekend. Some weeks are empty.

Re: organizing information
 

For the first boxes, where you keep the teacher manuals, etc, do you have one for each kid, per subject? Or one per subject with the different age stuff in it? Does that make sense?

My organizing heart loves both of the things you linked :giggle

Re: organizing information
 

Following. I'm similar to you and stated a new system end last year. Happy with how we started now it's summer holiday. But don't want to leave it too long.


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Re: organizing information
 

I have one per subject with different age stuff in it. (Most are Mediums, Writing is a Large.) The Math box has 2 Math-U-See manuals, 2 videos, a couple Life of Freds and the Beast Academy answer pack. My History box has SOTW plus a History encyclopedia, a dozen or so other books on the same time period, and some activities for the little kids.

Re: organizing information
 

I have my bookshelves organized by subject, and generally put any curriculum-ish stuff related to that subject on the shelf with teh books, to keep it all together.

For .pdfs I save them to Evernote, tagged with the subject and, if there's a specific time I want to remember to use it, I'll tag it with that too (so if I wanted to do a study on birds this month, to go along with the great backyard bird count, and I had a bird lapbook that might go with it, I'd tag it 2017.01 and then at the beginning of each month, I go through everything tagged for that month and add it to my calendar if I'm going to use it, or re-tag it (if, i decided not to do the bird thing this year, but probably will some year, I'd retag it 2018.01 so I could remember again next year).

For the next month or so, I have "lesson plans" in One Note (I used Evernote for both until Evernote switched to not allowing multiple devices and I want my lesson plans available on my laptop, tablet AND phone, so now I use OneNote for some stuff). I set up a grid for each week, days of the week across the top, "subjects" down the side, and then I include links, lib books, etc that, in a perfect world, we'd do that week. We rarely, if ever do everything, but it at least means I get the library books we (might) need, and such. So, when I go through and the Evernote "tags", I'd note in the lesson plans which I want to use. Then each weekend, I go through, the things we did from that lesson plan, I record in the record-keeping spreadsheet, things we didn't do, but might do this coming week, I just copy onto the new week's page. Things we're not going to do, I either delete or just leave there, not marked off.