Homeschooling and More...

I attended the local Catholic Homeschool Conference this year; I actually learned a lot. I have been homeschooling since my daughter's been in Kindergarten. Now, we have a first grader and third grader this year. We are doing First Communion Preparation, etc. this year too. So, it is an exciting year for our homeschool time. 

One of the things I learned about is having a homeschool area in your home -- it may not be a room -- that would be ideal, but it is not likely to happen in a small house. It can just be a book shelf or two where you put your homeschool books. 

Organizing, Tiding, Cleaning -- these are part of homeschool to do list. 

Prepare your homeschool area by organizing it. Do you need that book this year or not? If you do, keep it on the shelf, if you are not going to use it, but want to keep for a later year -- store it somewhere else if possible or maybe put it on a shelf that you are not using. If you don't want the book anymore -- maybe make an exchange for the books that you don't want or sell them. Homeschoolers never throw out anything usually -- exception you may throw out used or half used workbooks. Those can be bought again. 

Tiding: If you already have a homeschool area -- get rid of things that do not belong in that area. Throw it out or give it away -- depending if it is trash or something else -- like a clothing item -- put it in the kids' rooms. :) 

Cleaning--Dust your shelves, clean the room (if you have one), etc. Just make the area look clean.

After you have done all of above, you can now organize the shelves like you want them to be for your children. You have your own system, but as a librarian, I organize things alphabetically usually or by subject.

You can also have a crate for each child to put their books in that they need to work on. They can take the crate to their room to read a book or work on an item for homework if you have homework. 

Anyway, this is one of the ideas I got from the conference. You should also organize, tidy and clean your whole home before school starts as well -- some summer clean up is a good idea.

Patron Saint of your school? If you want to make a saint or title of Mary for your school this would be a good time to choose the title before school starts. We have a name for ours "Our Lady's Mantle Academy". Anyway, choose a name if you like or at least a patron saint. 

You also should make up your lesson plans before school starts unless you follow someone else's lesson plans. We kind of just make our own up. I sometimes follow -- but I end up noticing it works out for me to make up what we need to do. I like doing like certain subjects on M W F. and the others on T TH. 

Well, I hope this helps you start up your homeschool if you are homeschooling.

God Bless!