The concept of how to organize curriculum — ahh, the age old question, right? How in the world to do it?

When I started to homeschool, I didn’t know that was such a big discussion! I just started to follow the directions and that was that. My Father’s World Kindergarten suggested organizing in a folder for each “unit” (letter). That averages about one folder a week. Then to make it easier on myself, I added whatever books/extra I found for each unit I just added behind the folder.

When it was time to get organized for 1st grade, however, I was stuck. What to do?

I finally decided to stick with the folder systems that worked so well for me with K. I labeled each folder for the number days that went with that week. The workbooks, Bible notebook, and Bible reader used with My Father’s World 1st grade went inside her desk, so I didn’t have as much to compile and put together. Thank goodness. Kindergarten took up two milk crates. 1st grade fit in one of these folder boxes (I’ve had this for a bazillion years in my home office, used for various purposes.)

Now I will admit I did take this a bit overboard when organizing, but we were looking at starting 1st grade in a hotel room, remember? So, eliminating any excess and being super organized were the order of the day. But even now that we’re getting closer to the end, I’m still enjoying that craziness!

What I did was clip all the pages together for each day, and put a tiny post-it on it so I’d know which day that work went with. Really, MFW 1st grade doesn’t have that many loose items, especially toward the end. However, this was very useful when I added in any “extras” – our math curriculum worksheets, or any science pages, etc.

And what is making 1st grade so easy for me during this chaotic year? NO THINKING.

After reading other blogs, I really like the idea of having a grid to work with. And yes, the new revision of MFW’s 1st grade now comes with a grid. Oh well, worked on this for ages, and this is what I came up with. I clipped this to the front of each week’s folder.

Actually, this is a picture of an earlier version of my grid. I think I changed it 3-4 times this year to get it the way I really liked it.

   And now that I’m combining two years of homeschool with K and 1st, I need EASY. So now, I can just look at the folder and know exactly what comes next. I’ve got little checkmark boxes on each thing, so I can mark off when the assignment is completed. I have a date box at the top, so I can write down the day that we actually did that work, for tracking purposes. At the bottom I wrote the number of the day according to the curriculum, so I could go back and refer to the teacher’s manual when I needed to.

And then, the folders we are currently using (along with with any books, etc) are hung on the back of the door.

The folder system has really worked out great for us, and I plan to keep with it!