Organizing

Oh, how I love to organize!  I even like the word--it makes me think of neat drawers with pens, pencils, erasers, and nice clean stacks of paper, which of course leads to a nice orderly life, with everything tucked into its proper drawer or niche. . . .  Emily has this trait in common with me. In fact, her love of organization exceeds mine.  She thinks she has OCD, but I see evidence in her bedroom that it is not a full-blown case.

To prepare for a brand new homeschool year, I went to my computer to make weekly assignment sheets, with school subjects listed.  Each quarter of the year is color-coded, to track our journey through time at a glance, and each subject is filled in as much as possible.  I lovingly printed each page with corresponding dates, made a cardstock cover, and additional pages for special events and reading lists.  I took this treasure to Staples to have it spiral bound.  The dear young woman who took my order got distracted midway through punching holes, and turned half the pages upside down. . . . .to make a long story short, I had to re-print half the pages, again dating them individually.  This re-printing took a while! I returned to Staples to have it spiral bound (yes, they did it for free, or rather, I only had to pay for it once). The book has justified the effort to get it properly bound, and now serves as our anchor. I fill it in Sunday evenings, or whenever there is time before Monday.

Emily wants her assignments to come in daily--not weekly--packages.  After four weeks of school we've worked it out pretty well. Each evening we look over the week's assignments, and figure out a rational division of work, taking daily schedule challenges like music lessons into account.  She writes her assignments on a notepad for her own reference, and crosses assignments off as she completes them.  Crossing things off a list is almost as much fun as making the list in the first place!  Have you ever written extra little jobs on your to-do list, just to experience the joy of crossing them off and feeling like you've accomplished something?  Do you have urges to medicate me now?  A little Prozac, perhaps?

Making the assignment book was a good thing to do.  Making plans for a week is simple with a ready-made list in front of me, and I have the record of previous work available at my fingertips.  It might be a bit compulsive, but it is saving time in the long run, and will serve as a fabulous record of what Emily did her 9th grade year of school!