Storing Student School Work

Storing school work can be quite a task. You want to keep everything yet you don't want it to keep you! As the school year starts to close for many, we are left with mounds of paperwork. What to do? This is the way I organize our homeschool goods which also offers itself as a memory maker.

What I do is prepare two binders for each student per grade. I then take a "school picture" for the year and slip it inside the binder cover. This serves to label the owner of the binder as well as providing a memory of what your child looked like at that specific age. It is also special to decorate the covers with scrapbook supplies, stickers or clip art. I must admit to color coding the binders according to their clothing in the pictures but that is just my obsessive compulsive nature coming out. You can also have your students do their own decorating and paper organizing as a year end project or beginning of the year project. 

Inserting tabs into your binders (such as Bible, science/nature, math, etc., or according to unit of study such as bees, pioneers, pilgrims and so forth...) is the final touch. Then I simply file the school work in the proper category. You can start this up at the beginning of the year and add as you go or you can prepare it at the end of the year once you know what you have to work with.

It also helps to label the spine of the binders and it makes a pretty presentation on your school shelves. You can color code each binder to your children's favorite colors or you can just have fun and do whatever you please.

I also include pictures of the field trips taken that year, pictures of larger projects, science experiments and charts that will not fit into the binder. I make little scrapbook sheets (or have students do their own) by pasting these pictures down on card-stock and jotting down a few words pertaining to them. Then, I simply place these memory pages into plastic sheet protectors to keep them safe in the binder.

"Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another:

and the LORD hearkened, and heard it,
and a book of remembrance was written before him
for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name."

~ Malachi 3:16

How do you organize your school work?