Tapestry of Grace is the curriculum we are using this year, and we are really enjoying it.  I needed a reliable way for the older two to figure out what they need to do and how to get it all done in the week.  I also was struggling with where to keep everything, and how to organize it so that the work is easily accesible when needed, but also put away. 

The Organized Student (shown at the left) has saved my sanity.  In it, it suggests each student using a teacher’s style planner, rather than a timer, for assignments.  INGENIOUS!  Each week I print out the Tapestry of Grace Reading Assignements, Weekly Overview and the Work Pages.  Austin and Nathan then go down through each section and figure out how they are going to get it all done in the allotted time.  We have our discussion time set for Friday (which is a cool idea, I really love this discussion time), so they have up until Thursday to get everything done. You can see a picture of Nathan’s planner above  - complete with color coding that matches his file systems, too.  They also put other things in their planners.  Things that will effect the school day, like on Thursday mornings we are out of the house form 8-noon... that gets written in the planner so they remember to not overschedule on Thursday.  Also, any ‘after school’ activities are written into the bottom section of the planner - so they can remember those things, as well.  For longer term assignments, we use coordinating colored sticky notes places at the top of the planner in the week when the assignment is due.

The planner flows seamlessly with their accordion folder that is used for the day to day work.  The accordion folder has places for each subject’s work for the current unit.  They have ONE notebook which is held inside the binder, and that notebook is used for everything.  Then they tear out the page they wrote on and place it behind the appropriate subject’s tab.  The notebooks we are using are simple legal pads.  They are able to use as many sheets as is needed for a subject or assignment.  This has also helped with the misplacing of notebooks and lost in progress work.

At the beginning of their week, all assignment sheets, reading lists, etc are placed in the front file so they can each schedule as they wish in the planners. Completed work goes behind another tab, and work in progress is placed behind a 3rd tab.  By the end of the week, when we have our discussion time, the work to do file SHOULD be empty.  The completed work is quickly gone over (things that need graded have already been graded as they were completed), and the completed checked work is placed in the proper file.  Any work in progress is looked at, and is placed back in the work behind progress tab.

At the end of a unit (9 weeks for most of our subjects), the folder is cleaned out, some work samples are kept and filed in a working file at the kids’ desk.  They each have a hanging file system, again color coded to match both the planner and the accordion folder. 

I see a lot of value in this.  Austin and Nathan are learning a lot about how much to schedule in a certain time.  They have also discovered through trial and error that if they don’t follow through, then on our Friday discussion time, I get a little upset, they don’t have a clue what is going on, and they lose out on some activity so they can get caught up. 

We are enjoying our year!  Right now we are on week 16... almost half way done with our school year.  I have never had a school year that I felt was THIS on track.  I attribute that to the curriculum (can’t say enough good about Tapestry, it was written for us!), and also to the organization strategies I learned and put into practice from the book, The Organized Student.