Winning at Planning: Step 3

We are on our way to being planning winners! In step 1, you chose the subjects to teach and in step 2, you narrowed your purpose. In step 3, you will set up a system to organize your daily, weekly or monthly lessons.
I will show you the system that I have set up. I prefer to plan by the week, so I have 36 weeks to plan. If this works for you, great. If not, hopefully it will inspire you to create your own organizing system.

File box from Target
Hanging files (green)
File folders (red)
Sheets of labels

My system is all about files. I like this file box because it is small and portable. A file system works best for me because I can just drop things in each file. 

There are 36 green hanging files, one for each week of school. If you have only 1 child or want to make a separate box for each child, you could stop here. I've realized after just filling this box with files that it will most likely take 2-3 boxes for the entire year once lessons actually get placed in the folders.

In each green hanging file I placed 3 red file folders, one for each of my children.
So in the Week 1 hanging file, there is a file that says "Child's Name 1". As I plan, I will place the lesson or activity in the correct child's folder for the correct week. You could choose different colors for each child. I chose to stick with just red and green for 2 reasons: 1-our homeschool room is all red and green and 2- I didn't want to spend the money on 3 different colors.

If you prefer binders over files, you could set up a similar system with a binder for each child. Then use tab dividers to make 36 weeks. Make sure you have a good 3 hole punch.

I strongly encourage you to check out thrift stores, garage sales and Freecycle for file boxes and even boxes of file folders. Milk crates and baskets can hold files too. Be creative.

Go get busy! When you're ready, join me back here for Step 4 where the real planning begins.