School: Organized

This is how I organize the kids school work.  With 6 kids in 6 different grades, all doing a minimum of 5 subjects I need a way to keep it all organized or I would have no idea what I am doing.

Once I know what curriculum I am using I decide when we will have breaks and make my calendar around that. I always give time off for Thanksgiving and the day after.  I give at least 2 weeks for the end of the year and one week at Passover (Spring break/Easter).  This year I didn't write the days of the week on their schedule cause I knew we wouldn't be here some days in the middle of the week and they would have to make it up on Sundays. So I just did Day 1- Day 5.  You can do more or less, whatever suits your schedule.  I do know someone who did school 6 days a week.  I figure out how many pages per day they would have to do to get through the book in a year/semester/etc.  The 3 biggest kids do both Science and Health.  So I break it up between semesters.  My oldest does 2 semesters in Science then 2 in Health.  The other 2 do 1 in Health.  My oldest is doing Half the year in Latin and Half in Art.

I have the schedule arranged so that they can check off the work as its done.

 I made a copy for me and instead of checking it off I have a spot to record grades.  I also keep progress reports and a report card for each semester/yearly total.

 I color code their notebooks.  So I can just grab a book instead of trying to figure out whose is whose and what subject they put in there.  So Red is Math, Green is History, Blue is Science, Yellow is Spelling and Black is Misc.  

All their books are kept in a back pack.  This serves 2 purposes: It keeps kids out of the school work and they can just pick it up and go when they need to.  Working at grandmas today?  Just grab it and go.

I keep all the answer keys, quizzes, test etc in a drawer system.  Honestly I need bigger drawers.  A filing cabinet would be better.  But it is what it is.  I have a box under my desk for all the extras they will need throughout the year.

I copy all their reproducible stuff, some has to be copied because it is meant to be cut and pasted and you would lose the stuff on the other side if you didn't.  But I have learned that its better to keep a hard copy so you can make more for redos and also because next year that book might be out of print and you are out of luck.  So it might be time and money to copy but in the long run it saves me a headache.  They keep all those types stapled together or in 3 ring binders depending on what its.  All color coded of course.