How to Organize Notebooks and Binders

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If you’re not careful,  it is easy to get lost in a sea of papers. You need to have a system and organize your children’s notebooks and binders. I like simple and I don’t want to have to go searching for their assignment from the night before. We’ve discussed weekly schedules in my 31 days to a better planned homeschool series and now we move onto the nitty gritty of prepping your homeschool.

Use spiral notebooks

I get my spiral notebooks at Walmart for  5 cents when they go on sale in August. I love using them for all of our subjects. I don’t have to deal with loose papers and we never lose anything. 

Organize each subject

Within the binder, I use post it notes to divide up the different subjects in the binders, if I’m using them. Teach them early to place their work in the correct area and to start writing in the proper places. It will save you the headache of helping your child organize their binder after they’ve crammed 200 pieces of paper in it.

Get the hole reinforcements for paper

With my oldest I have to use a binder because he does a lot of notebooking and uses a lot of printables. I have to buy the hole enforcers around the holes of the paper because every time he writes in the binder he pulls the paper away and then it gets ripped out of the binder and I have loose pages everywhere. And then they take an hour to find their assignment that they are suppose to be working on from the day before. 

Only print what you need

I’ve made the mistake of printing out half a years worth of curriculum, only to find that my child hated it, and we had to switch to something else. Then we’d have a lot of scrap paper to draw on. Don’t be wasteful and only print off a month’s worth of work, see how you like it, and then go all out. That way if things change you’re not at a loss.

Organize your shelves

Each child has their own area on my shelves, that way no one loses anything and they all know where everything should go at the end of the day. Make them responsible for their own books and supplies so that when they go missing, there’s no one else to blame.

Follow along in my 31 Days to a Better Planned Homeschool series. 

You’ll also want to check out the other 26 bloggers in this series as well and join our Homeschool Tips 4 Moms Facebook group if you’d like to connect with other homechooling mothers.