Now for the personal tour, divided up by theme.  We are five days down, 175 to go, so homeschooling is pretty much all I think about right now.  I am not a naturally organized person, but through a series of miracles, I think I finally have something that works.  This is what it looks like.

1.  This is my office.  Those shelves contain my books, including course plans not in use and all the solutions manuals.  Also contains school books that I don’t want kids getting into, either because of replacement cost or a very-PG rating.

Squint at the desk on the right, and you’ll see this:

It took me, oh, you know maybe TWENTY YEARS to figure out I needed a desk-top file box.   There’s a file in there for any kinds of papers I need to either access quickly or file frequently: phone number lists, activity calendars, kids’ current-year school portfolios, and an assortment of other odds and ends for me personally.  (SuperHusband gets the other desk.)

The bulletin board behind the desk is for near-term papers I need in my face.  Last week it held a copy of the girls’ party invitation.  Right now it has the announcement for the local catechist training seminar coming up.  I like it empty.

Sitting on the desk is my personal calendar, week-at-glance.  I take it with me whereever I go, or else I am very very sorry I did not.  (Did I lose your phone number that you wrote on the church bulletin? See?  I should have brought the pink book.)  Also, I always regret it if I don’t look at the calender every morning.  But a lot of mornings I don’t.  And then I regret it.

3. This is the freezer door, and behind it lie the wonders of science.  But on the surface is the more pressing homeschooling need, the calendars everyone else looks at.  I put the week’s activities on the dry-erase board, and then use empty squares to write in items for the grocery list as needs are made known.

[I used to keep this on the wall behind my desk.  And I never used it, because it was awkward to write on.  Then I saw one just like it at my friend Judy’s house, only she used hers.  Because it was on her freezer.]

The tiny strip of bulletin board holds up a monthly calendar, which I update every now and again when we need to figure out whether we are free for this or that.  It also holds important papers such as the list of meals for the week (torn off from the paper grocery list I took to the store), and the list of lost homebrewing supplies we would dearly like to find again.  Behind the monthly calendar, on their own tacks, are the church youth group activity calendar and the altar-server  schedule, since both of those I need to actually look at pretty often.

Also on the freezer is a little metal organizer that holds dry-erase markers, the dog’s thyroid medicine, and bills that need to be paid.  [All the other pet meds are on top of the freezer, and I finally got smart today and put them in a big ziplock bag so they wouldn’t fall off the freezer and dissappear forever.  They could still fall off, but they’ll do it in giant blob that won’t slip into the dusty communal grave of Things That Got Kicked Under the Fridge.]

4.  This year I made a little zone in the living room for all the kids’ current-year school books.   So they are all in one place.  In previous years I let certain children keep their books on their desks in their rooms.  Bad idea.   Recipe for lost books.

On the top shelf you see a milk crate for each big kid.  All their books plus a binder with the quarter’s course plans, daily grading sheet, and a dry-erasable daily checklist they can choose to use or not, go in that box.  Nearby (you’ll see it in a future episode maybe) is the chair where I sit to issue and grade homework.  A kid stands by that chair and delivers to me the book & work I request, and puts back what I’m done with.    So far, 5 days into the year, that process is working great, except that I need to make a box for the solutions manuals so I can haul them into the living room with me.  It turns out I don’t actually know that much Latin.

Top shelf of the wooden bookcase contains library books, a box with blank penmanship worksheets (kids just choose whatever they want for that day from what is in the box — they all write about the same, I know), and the five-year-old’s “workbox”.  That means her basket of activity books to do school-y stuff with when she is bored waiting on me to work with her.

Middle shelf has two little girls’ real school books, plus frequently-referenced extra books, like the dictionary.  And whatever else the kids randomly put away there.

Bottom shelf has the 2nd grader’s workbox and more related-but-not-required books.  All kids are studying Ancient Rome / Ancient Civilizations, so those types of books from our family library are there right now, and American History (so last year) are off on a different set of shelves elsewhere.

To left of the shelves are the Math Drawers.  Bottom drawer contains math activities (thank you Laura B.!), top drawer contains upper-grades math manipulatives for fractions and algebra.  Or something.  The big box on the top has containers with little Units and Tens blocks, and then a stack of Hundreds blocks.  Except that everyone seems to be doing math in my bedroom, which means many of the blocks have now found a home on top of the old ice chest by my bedroom door.

Way up on top of the milk crates are the good school books that the kids don’t need yet, but belong in the pile of current-year books, and I don’t want anybody touching them.  But I want to remember where they are, because soon, very soon, some child will need them.