Homeschool Planning: It's A Start (Just Some Jibber Jabber)

I had a pretty productive weekend as far as planning for the new school year goes.  I found lots of good deals on supplies, and cleaned out and reorganized my file crate.  I really, really hope to spend most of the week hitting the planning hard and getting a good chunk of it done.  This past week has been tough, with ds3 being family member #4 to come down with the dreaded virus that started back in June with ds4.  It's really not that bad an illness, a day of fever, a day or so of congestion, but the worst of it is the cough!  It's like a never-ending cough.  We have dubbed it the summer long cough lol.  And apparently the virus lives for quite a while, as ds4 caught it in June and it went through him, me, ds2 and now ds4, almost a whole month later!  And we all still have the cough.  Just a darn tickle in your throat that no lozenge or amount of Vicks Vapor Rub seems to help.  And poor ds3 has just started the venture, and that is when the cough is most aggressive, keeping you (and the household for that matter) up at night.  So....I haven't had a good week for planning.

But for my weekend, well, that was a bit better.  I found some good deals at Wal-Mart, with .05 notebooks and .88 markers.  Then at Target I found a big pack of glue sticks for .99, a 2-pack of scissors for <$1.00, and a bunch of school stuff in the $1.00 bin, like a state notebook and a cute little mini-globe.  Today at Office Depot I picked up .01 folders (they limited it to 20, but I had dh buy 20 as well), .01 compass and .01 eraser tops.  They had other penny deals, but it was stuff I didn't need.  There I also bought a big box of colored file folders (to supplement my file crate and use for our newfound love of lapbooking) and some new file holders.  When I was checking out I saw a 12 pack of mini Sharpies for $2.99 and couldn't resist!  When they rang up $12.99 I asked why and found out the sale had actually ended yesterday, but the cashier gave them to me anyway.  What a deal.  I clipped them all to a metal key ring and used them for my file organizing.

The file crate before.

My file crate now has dividers with holders for all 3 boys and myself, and sections for summer, fall, winter and spring, as well as science, history, reading and lapbooking.  In our sections I'll put whatever notes and paperwork I need for the boys' current lessons, and in the seasons' section I put folders for all the holidays and filled them with ideas I get from the internet or magazines.  Same with the school subjects as well.  I am hoping this new system will work this year for me.  In the back of the crate I'm storing homeschool catalogs, completed lapbooks, and the 5 pocket files I store the boys' completed work in by subject (to use for their portfolios.)

I know this seems to be a lot of jibber jabber, (take that spell checker HA!) but I just want to chronicle my planning this time to see in the future what worked and what didn't.  And since I have begun blogging, I have pretty much stopped journaling.  So here I journal.  Just ignore the crazy lady behind the curtain and move along! LOL