January organization

School is going well this week. We are reading quite a few books with winter as our theme. My sunshine loving Essie told me that she was not impressed by the books I had chosen from the library yesterday...they made her cold! Wait until we study the Iditarod next month..she will freeze for sure!

I have been tweaking my system for keeping paperwork organized this week. I found a wonderful blog from a lady named Dawn, who has some great ideas. I have a link on my sidebar to her blog...she probably thinks I am stalking her I have visited the site so much this week.

The reason I need something better as far as organization is that I will often find cool lapbook ideas or crafts and then I forget about them the week I wanted to do them. So I now have my very own file crate system!



The gist is you have a crate with 6 hanging folders, each one representing two months. Then within that folder, you place smaller manila folders, one for each week. Whenever I find something interesting to do, I simply slip it in the file for the week I want to do it. Then on the weekend before, I pull that file out while I am working on lesson plans and I can gather any materials needed. I will see how well it works, but I am excited about it





I also made myself two folders for out two vacations coming up. We have been planning to go to Florida in February to see family and camp at Disney. This weekend we found out that Greg's parents are going to take us on a cruise in May!! We are sooooo excited. I have my two folders now to put anything that come about the vacation, as well as paper to make lists of reminders and plans. I have them along with my church info folder all in this cute little magazine holder I bought at Target for $1!




Another idea from Dawn is a journal to go along with my monthly planner. It is basically a notebook where I put the date each day for two pages. Then I have a spot to jot down ideas, paste recipes, poems ect that comes up in a day that I am sure to forget. It is not very pretty to look at, but it seems to be helping me remember more things. I did go through our Christmas cards and clip any cute graphics I can stick on random days to brighten up the pages.

Well, we are puttering around the house all day today and so glad not to have to go out in the cold wind and rain. Only problem with theses lazy days is that we seem to stretch school out way too long for me! So, off to get some children back on task...again.