Home School Daze, or Home School Craze?

What a long time since I have stopped by my own page! My apologies. :) I have been otherwise occupied, but happy enough.

I have been focused on all things home school (HS); post-1st and pre-2nd grades. With my recent submission to medical intervention in my health came a host of side effects and fatigue so I had put off a lot. Last week and this I determined that, come what may, mommy is getting her work done! (Looks like next week also. haha)

Deciding to be more organized, I went on a web search. I was perusing links related to record-keeping. IN demands the bare minimum, but I like accountability, so I wanted to find every record a HS parent could possibly need in even the most regulated states. Should the time ever come, I would rather be prepared so I do not need to work in reverse b/c everything is handy. 

I have all of her work and records from Kindergarten already kept in a drawer. Since we were now through 1st grade and the drawer would run out of room I considered moving them to a plastic tub that I can add to later. My deepest interest was in creating a binder that held duplicates of the most important records to have accessable in a moment's notice. 

I had to laugh when I came upon an article labeling four types of organizing HSM's. (Home School Moms) The author had listed them as 1.Cubbies 2.Tubbies 3.Binder Queens and 4.Question mark. It turned out that I am an amalgamation of the top three! I had to laugh at that! Cubbies store work and records in a drawer or cupboard. Tubbies store work in a tub. Binder queens keep everything meticulously organized in a binder. hehe Imagine that! 

In case you are wondering, the question marks are those moms who throw record-keeping out the window and look quite clueless when asked what system they use. :) You may read the entire article here.

So maybe it is a little bit of over-kill, but I feel as though I have learned a thing or two about myself. Today I stand, mistress over my HS domain. :) My 'cubbie' is now empty, ready to hold a new batch of school supplies. (Let us face facts - two drawers is simply NOT enough!) My 'tubbie' is happily and neatly packed with the last two years, and labeled. I have separate red folders for each year's important paperwork (packed away with the correct year's work) and the piece de resistance... my thick three-ring-binder, laden with tabbed sections for student data, records (including the running cumulative, of course) and tabs for duplicates of each year's red folder. 

Whether or not this is how other HSM's do things, I am so pleased to have worked it through (I have a few papers to print, hole-punch, and file this afternoon) that I am beaming a very tired but accomplished internal grin. :) Not to mention the best part - my reward! What is it? Well, I get to break into the new lesson planner and set of schoolbooks, of course!  

As a child I learned to be excited by and appreciate the smell of new school books fresh out of the box they were delivered in. As an adult I am twice as nuts about it, at least! haha I am finally on the side of education that gets to use all the office supplies! Now tell me, who wouldn't be excited by that?!?!?