It is that time of year again when kids are starting a new school year. I am a homeschool mom who recently “retired” after teaching my three kids for sixteen years. Soon they will all be going off to college. I will miss homeschooling, but it wasn’t always easy. We had our ups and downs, but for me the benefits outweighed the negatives. There were moments of tears and frustration, for instance, when I realized my three kids all learned in different ways.

When my middle son was young, he had trouble learning how to read. I used the same method to teach reading with my second son, Zach, as I did with my first, but it was frustrating for him and he became discouraged. I remembered reading that kids, as well as adults, do not all learn the same way. The Way They Learn: How to Discover and Teach to Your Child’s Strengths, by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias, is a great resource book to discover how your children learn best. After my realization that how I was teaching Zach to read was not how he learned the best, I decided to make a change. Through observation and reading up on learning styles, I discovered he remembered more effectively when he had a way to visualize pictures and words combined with more activity, instead of just sitting and looking at a book. I consulted a friend of mine, and she recommended a curriculum she had tried that sounded like a perfect fit for Zach. From then on, it was such a joy to watch everything begin to click with my son and the joy he displayed as he began learning how to read. Zach is an avid reader to this day. Exploring how your kids learn best is one key in succeeding at homeschooling.

Another key to homeschooling for me was creating a system of keeping their school things as organized as possible, which included using lessons plans and recording grades. It is easy to find yourself buried in papers, books, supplies, and art projects. The following are ideas that may be a help to you and your family:

• Have a dedicated area for them to learn in. This may change depending on their age. When my kids were in grade school, we had school at the dining room table. This was large enough for all of us to sit at and have plenty of room to work. If you have an extra room in the house, you could make that into your school area. You could use a large table or find small desks for each of them. As they got older, my kids and I would do some school together at the table. After meeting with each of them, my kids would then work independently in their bedrooms.
• Find a spot for school supplies and books. I gave each of my children a container to hold their pencils, pens, glue, rulers, calculators, etc. I placed their container and books for the year on a bookshelf next to the table. You can store books not being used in a separate cabinet or shelf, or alternatively, put them in storage until needed. It was also handy to have a drawer/cabinet nearby which kept supplies that they mutually used, such as tape, extra pencils, erasers, paper and a stapler.
• Use various containers to house arts and craft supplies. If you like doing lots of art activities, having a place to keep supplies separate and in containers makes it easy to grab what you need and to clean up. You can also see what supplies you have in stock.
• Create a place for papers to be filed. As I have blogged about in the past, papers can take over your home and create clutter. Designate a spot for papers that you have to correct if you can’t get to them right away. I also had a new file for each of my kids at the beginning of each year for papers and art projects that I wanted to keep and tests that I needed to hang on to. At the end of the year, I would go through the files and whatever I kept went into a memory container for them in the basement.
• Utilize a notebook for your daily lesson plans. I had a notebook for each of my kids in which I would keep lesson plans for the week. I also had some record keeping sheets to record how they did on tests, math homework, papers, etc. Click here for my free lesson planning pages that I used.
• Have a system for recording grades. I had a grade book to track how the kids were doing throughout the year. When they entered the ninth grade, I would then transfer their grades to the computer and use that information to make a transcript, which came in handy when they applied for their respective colleges.

Add in the comments any ideas that you have for the start of the new year or any questions you may have.