Tag Archives: organizing

Friday Freebie–Daily and Weekly “to-do” lists

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It can be so hard to keep up with everything.  And while a family calendar goes a long way toward  making life a little more manageable, to-do lists have to rank second on my list of best ways to keep my days running smoothly.

As much as I love them, my kids love them more!  There is something so incredibly satisfying about knowing what has to be done, and getting to mark it complete when you’ve done it. 

To that end, I’ve created these lists and schedules for you, that match that fun Curriculum Planner I featured last week.  Here’s a peak:

There are two sheets each of these two different weekly styles.  On set of them goes from Monday through Friday for a standard work/school week.  The other goes from Monday through Sunday.

Also included are 4 versions of the daily lists above.  Being a workboxing family, I made each list 12 items long.  You can use them to plan out your specific boxes for each day, or just as a general list, if you don’t do workboxes.

And, of course, we had to have a daily schedule.  Sometimes I forget that learning to schedule and use time wisely is an important skill my kids need to learn.  In fact… I think I need to learn it right along with them!  Both of these daily schedules go from 7 in the morning until about 8:30 at night and the go in 1/2 hour increments.  A great starter schedule, I think.

You can get this whole packet of lists and schedules for free this weekend!  Friday through Monday, in fact.  After that, it’s just $2.00!  I hope you enjoy it.

Just a reminder that there are more freebies available for you if you missed them earlier this week.  You can still grab the workbox tags from Wednesday and the Assignment Cards from Tuesday.   And if you download a freebie, that’s worth 10 entries in our Not Back To School Giveaway! Have you entered the giveaway? 

Not Back To School Blog Hop–Homeschool Room Week

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Not Back to School Blog Hop

Little Learning Lovies is joining in the Not Back To School Blog Hop!  If you are a new visitor here from the blog hop, I welcome you and encourage you to sign up for our emails or follow LLL in your favorite reader.  We send out freebies every week that are available for a few days at a time and we have lots of special freebies coming to you this month in honor of the NBTS Blog Hop.  Don’t miss them!  And don’t forget to enter our giveaway this month.  You’ll find it at the end of every one of our Blog Hop posts.  Thanks for visiting!

I  admit it.  I DON’T love my homeschool room.  Whew.  Glad I got that off my chest. 

You see… I don’t have a homeschool room.  Like a lot of people out there, our house is just too small to make room for all of us to sleep, eat, play, work and school.  A big portion of our basement is dedicated to our home office, where my husband and I run our business.  The other small area is for laundry and storage.  The house is three bedrooms which is great (we had no kids when we moved here!) but they are all filled up with kids now!  So where do we school? 

Anywhere we can! 

We use the dining table as our flat spot for writing.  We use our couch for reading together, or alone.  We use our back yard for art, nature studies, science lessons (too many trees for that solar oven to work, though!) and more reading.  We’ve even used our windows accessible from the back deck as white boards. 

Dry erase markers + windows = fun math time!

But then there’s all the STUFF that comes with homeschooling.  Books, papers, plans, record keeping, manipulatives, organizing, workboxes…  Where do we keep it all? 

The coat closet of course.  Smile 

I wrote in detail last year all about how we took our ex-coat closet and turned it into our homeschool hub.  Most everything we need and use is in that closet, including our workbox drawers (I have an advantage over some, here: I use one set of boxes for three kids!)  You can read the details of how I set it all up here. 

Oh, how I long for a homeschool room with walls, floor space, individual space for the kids to work… Maybe someday! Winking smile

Don’t forget to enter in our big giveaway in honor of the Not Back To School Blog Hop!  We’re giving away 4 gift cards to the Little Learning Lovies Store

so you can try out our downloads. 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck! 

Don’t forget to sign up for email alerts (Check in the side bar for the sign up!) so you know when the next freebie is available.  Right now, you can get the Curriculum Planner from last week (today only!) for FREE!  Come back tomorrow for a free classroom helper.  I won’t say anymore, but I think you’ll like it!

What’s in the Box Wednesday: Our Set-Up

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What's In The Box Wednesday Image Well, I realize that it isn’t actually Wednesday.  And I also realize that I haven’t posted a Wednesday feature in a few weeks, but I’ll tell you why:  I was embarrassed to show you my boxes!

Actually, it wasn’t the boxes I didn’t like.  It was the mess that surrounded them!

Today, though, I’m going to take a moment to share with you my latest adventure . . . I cleaned out our front closet.

I didn’t take before photos and I’m somewhat sad about that, but really, trust me on this, you didn’t want to see it.  Picture a closet meant to be a coat closet.  Fill it up with about 25 coats of varying sizes, with only one or two actually fitting anyone in the house.  Then stack bags and bags of fabric, yarn, various crafting supplies, bits of projects half completed more than 7 years ago, boxes from when we moved in here over 7 years ago (!?), mail (hush now) from when we moved in . . . well, you get the idea.

So I had to keep our workboxes outside this closet.  And a bin for shoes next to it.  And all manner of other things that would get shoved out of the way for school time only to end up in front of or on top of our boxes by dinner time.  Not ideal.

Well, here’s a picture of our front hall, such as it is.  You’re looking from my dining room into a little alcove area.  To the right (behind that out-of-place T-square I borrowed from my husband and never returned…. Sorry honey!) is our front door.  To the left is a closet door, hiding behind our giant American flag which we pledge allegiance to every morning.  Where that folding stool is currently residing was the home our workboxes before I fixed it.

And here’s what’s in the closet.  No more coats that don’t fit.  No more scrunched up bits of wrapping paper.  I am thinking of finding a new home for the vacuum, if I can manage it.  I’d love this to just be a school space. (Oh, and sewing.  Did I mention that half the stuff in the top of the closet is my sewing stuff?  Oh well.)

These are our actual boxes.  I love these drawers.  They are strong and sturdy, rugged and reliable.  No matter how hard they are pulled, yanked, slammed and smashed, they come through looking like new.  I’ve had these drawers for over a decade and they still look like I just bought them.  Aside from a bit of dust, that is.  :)

We do ten boxes and we do them together.  Three kids, so three copies of everything.  It’s really fun this way!

Some folks use these as their workboxes, but I find them to be far to flimsy to stand up to daily use.  I use these to store materials.  Much of it is there for the kids to use or for me to use when prepping for their lessons.  Kids are in these drawers a few times a week and it’s much better that way!

This is what makes workboxes possible for us.  In the front of this file crate I keep folders marked Monday through Friday and I copy everything I’m going to need for a few weeks and put it all in there.  That way when evening comes and it’s time to load boxes for the next day, I just have to grab things from the files and move them to the box.  Easy, fast and convenient.  The rest of the file box holds things that I’ve found and printed out but I’m not ready to use them yet.

I didn’t get a great picture of these, but I made a few library bags.  We use our library extensively and I felt bad about them always giving us bags that I’m sure they pay quite a bit for.  Our library is tiny and facing possible closure, so to save them a few dollars, I made these bags.  The kids adore them and treat them and the books we bring home in them with much more reverence than before.  Each bag took me only a few scraps of fabric and one baby nap-time to make so I count that as an excellent return on my investment!

Now… You might be wondering what I’ve put in our workboxes.  And if you’ve  never used boxes for school work, you might be wondering what on earth I’m even talking about.  Well, to be honest, It’s 1:00 in the morning as I’m writing this out and I’m quite tired.  And, I’m sure you’ll agree, this post is already rediculously long, so I’m going to stop here and save our “What’s In The Box” for another day.

Until then, here’s a sweet baby picture of our newest daughter:

:)