Organizing your hs'ing stuff?

[Irish_Blue]

I've been looking into ways to organize all of my curriculum, lesson plans, how often we do things, WHAT were doing & so on and so forth.

There's the hs organizing thing that you can download (the one Pam shared with us.) so I downloaded the basic edition, but I'm not sure if it's something I'll use. The idea behind it is great though, but for some reason I think I'd use a paper trail more often.

My main reason for wanting to be organized is so that if I need to print anything, or have any materials for projects/activities/baking fun that I'll have it all ready for when we do it. I plan on going through everything (which I'm almost done with) and having most of it all planned/written out. Then each wk I'll make sure I have everything I need ie: enough copies of said subject, any materials or ingredients if were doing a project or baking something.

Anyhow I guess I'm just brainstorming in how I'll make all of this easily organized & thurough.

How do you ladies do it? :

[LeBoof]

I've been using the free download from Homeschool Tracker for the "official" records if anyone ever needs to see a report card or whatever, but for my own use we've been using 2 differet folders. My son has a folder for whatever paperwork he wants to keep or for long term projects he needs to keep track of. I have a binder with a couple of folders in it for keeping a day by day list of what we are going to do/have done . It also gives me a place to put notes on what works/doesn't work and why and ideas that we might try later. I can also put pictures of field trips in one of the folders Since some of our field trips are spontaneous I usually keep a digital camera in my purse and just print out the pictures when we get home and I have time. I forgot it the last field trip though and I so wish I'd gotten the pictures of my son with the fire engines and the firehouse. That was a spur of the moment trip to the local firehouse to ask if we could arrange a tour and they did it for us on the spot

LeBoof