Gearing up for a new school year

Tomorrow we will start our third year of homeschooling.  I'm planning to put up a post or a page on here soon about our curriculum choices for this year.  I know how much homeschooling moms love to check out a curriculum post!!  For now, I'm going to share my system of organization which has evolved over time into what works for us now.

Right now I have the first 6 or so weeks of our school year planned out.  I am lucky that our main curriculum is a unit study approach and lays out what we do for reading, language, social studies and science.  This makes my life SO much easier.  (I know you are now dying to hear what we are using!)  I'm using the file box shown below to hold the papers and worksheets that we need for the weeks I've planned out so far.  Each of my sons has a hanging file folder inside.  In that folder are stacks of papers for each week, clipped together and divided by week.

Here are the two folders inside the box that hold their papers.

This next photo shows the stacks of papers paper-clipped together by week.

For a few years now, I've typed up work plans for each of the boys so they can easily see what work they need to complete each day as well as for the whole week.  They keep these workplans on clipboards as shown below.  This year I've changed the way I format the workplans a bit, and I think we'll really like looking at our week this way.  Now they can more easily see what they have to complete for each subject by looking down the vertical column.  They can also easily see what needs to be done in a given day by looking across a row.   Last year I just used the day of the week as a heading and then listed out what needed to be done that day underneath.

Clipboards and all books/manuals/workbooks needed for completing assignments are kept in a basket.  Each of the boys has their own basket.  The basket also has a small pencil case that holds pencils, erasers, scissors and a glue stick.  These photos also show boxes of markers which are new for the school year.  We will either keep these in plastic boxes or in our supply drawers.  They won't stay in the boxes for long.

The baskets sit on a little dresser thing that we have right by our dining room table.  Like many newbie homeschoolers, the first year of homeschooling I set up a special "room" in our home to do our homeschool work.  Like most homeschoolers who've been at this a while, I have now learned that we like to do our work on the couch in the living room, at the dining room table, or other places in the house.  We don't like to be sitting at desks in the "homeschool" room all day.  So.....it works great for us to have our materials easily accessible within the space where we will do most of our work.  I like that the baskets can contain the clutter and hold everything we need at our fingertips.  The little drawers in the photo hold markers, crayons and colored pencils (that drawer is missing.........it's in my oldest son's bedroom, I'm pretty sure.)  When we need to use any of those supplies, we just pull out the drawer and move it where we need it, then return it to its place when we're done.  Easy peasy!  This system has worked great for us.  I'd love to hear how you get organized, so feel free to add your own two cents in the comments!!