WOOOHOOO!
You may be wondering why I am saying WooHoo when this post is about cleaning and organizing??? Are you???

Well I said WooHoo because I have a day off from homeschooling. My hubby and boys went with a man from church to volunteer at the Sunday Breakfast Mission in Philadelphia. The day counts as school for the boys... Community Service... great to do this time of year... and they will be doing some repair work so that can count as Home and Life Management. While they are gone the girls and I have the house to ourselves!!!!! I am cleaning my room... Flat surfaces in our home tend to get things piled on them...

So here are the areas I am concentrating on.
First is my scrapbook table in my bedroom... This gets cluttered to quickly. I want to clean this up so that during Christmas break from school I can take some time to scrapbook.

Do you need a planner for school? Here is one that has some of everything. First I would like to say that I will not be telling you about every page in this planner. Why??? Because there are 614 of them!!  I will tell you more about my favorite pages and some that I will definitely be using in our homeschool. I will also tell you about some of the general features of this pdf planner that I love.

Now... where to start???

At the beginning of course.
The first thing is the table of contents. This is TOS... even the table of contents are special.  Not only is the table of contents detailed and helpful, so you know what the pages are, but they are clickable. Click on the name and Voila!!! You are on that page. Great! Oh, there is a pages tab on the left that will pop up with thumbnails of each page that you can click on, too; or a bookmarks tab where you see the names of pages and can click on the links there instead of the thumbnails. Those things make it easy to navigate while in this pdf.
Now on to the actual pages in the planner.

There is truly something here for everyone.
The first section contains the monthly sets of pages. Here you will find a variety of pages for each month of the year. First up there are special articles (2 for each month). The articles are by a variety of well known homeschoolers. They are encouraging, challenging and on a variety of subjects from "Preparing a Rich Foundation for the Young Artist" to "Practical Computer Literacy for the 21st Century." Mixed in with those are 24 must-know lists, plus the must-know lists from previous years.

For each month there is also a Schoolhouse Store Resource List with links to other items TOS sells on the same topics as the theme's for that month.

Next, add in some recipes to spice up or sweeten your life. There are 4 recipes for dinner items for each month + 2 desserts each month... YUMM! They also provide an article about eating allergies and one recipe a month that is Gluten and Dairy Free. Here are a few recipes that I will be adding to our menu planner soon: Blueberry Crumble Cake, Savory Slow-Cooker Chicken Legs (we like to cook in the crock-pot for Sunday's so we have something ready to eat when we come home from church), GFCF Brownies (my hubby eats GF= Gluten Free), Individual Hot Chocolate Cakes, and Slow-Cooker French Dip Sandwiches. There are others too... but I don't want to spoil the fun... oh... there were LOTS more Desserts I want to try!!! And one more thing about the recipes... Many of them were submitted by my fellow TOS Homeschool Crew members! Crew

There are more than 120 forms in the TOS Planner.
There are calendar pages, yearly ones for 2010 through 2013, and monthly ones too. Oh, I forgot I was not going to tell you about every page. OK... on to my favorites.

The ABCs of Landforms and The ABCs of Landforms Worksheet. The first has all the answers... the second has blanks so your kids can research the information themselves or you could use it as a fill in the blanks page if you already studied the landforms.

I am going to print and laminate The Kitchen Conversion Cheat Sheet, with some common conversions of cooking measurements, and post it in the kitchen.

I forgot to tell you one of the best features of this planner is that most of the forms are customizable so you can type your information right into the form. This makes the forms much more personal and useful. You can add your kids names, subjects, curriculum , and other information, and then print the forms for your planner. You can also save multiple copies of the planner and just use it that way on your computer. You could save one with each of your children's names with information specific to them and you can save one for yourself with your personal and/or school stuff in it. Dad might even want a copy as there are forms for home improvement and car maintenance.

Anyway... back to the Curriculum Key Chart. This chart seen at the right is awesome. I already typed this one up for us and will keep it in my homeschool planner. Then I can remember the abbreviations I want to use in my school log. I can also put it in the portfolio so those reading my log later will know what the abbreviations mean. I love the customizable planner pages.


I also love the Monthly Goals and Yearly Goals pages. I will be filling them in soon and printing them for my personal use. I may also have the boys set some goals and print out pages for them, too. 


The Beginning/Ending Page is great. It is for comparing the students Height, Weight, Likes, etc at the beginning and end of the year. Maybe this will get me going on taking our beginning of the year school pictures, which also go on this page. I keep forgetting to take them and don't want it to be the end of school before I remember.

 The Community Service Record page is really useful and boy do I need it. I keep forgetting to write down the community service Nathan has done. He has done a lot. I need to record it. It will be easy to keep this record by typing it in the form and then printing it out for his portfolio.


OK... I could go on... and on, but... you get the idea, so I will stop now. I am sure you have seen enough to know I love this new planner. I will post pictures of the new recipes we try and let you know how they go.


Here is a free sample you can check out and keep. It has 59 pages. It will give you an idea of some of the things in the planner. It Includes the table of contents (where each form is described in detail), some of the July pages, the July calendar, and then a nice assortment from the household and educational forms section. 

The Planner costs $39.00 and it has 614 pages, that makes the cost of each page just over 6 cents... That is quite a bargain. 

Follow this link , it will give you more information and then click on the Buy Now button to see even more information about the product and an option to purchase it as a download: TOS 2010 Homeschool Planner.
If you prefer to get a cd of the planner that costs $44.00 and you can find that link here: TOS 2010 Homeschool Planner on CD.



As a member of the TOS Crew, I wrote this blog post while participating in the The Old Schoolhouse advertising campaign, making me eligible to get a prize. I received a free copy of the planner to facilitate the writing of this blog post.

FM Tristan, a first mate on the TOS Crew, asked this question on her blog on Thursday. Here is the link to her post followed by a quote from that post with the question she was asking.

Today before I back things up to CD I really want to go through and re-organize files a bit.  I have all my lapbooks in one file that is then broken down by company.  I am considering breaking them down by subject instead.  I have many PDF files that are just sitting in My Documents folder instead of organized in some way. 

How do you organize your files?  Do you stick with topics, age groups, companies, or some other way all together?  Do you regularly back up your files or would a computer crash today make you cry at the thought of all the files you would have lost?

I keep all my things together by topic. I put lapbooks in the folders by topic so I can find them when I plan our units. I don't like keeping things sorted by company. It does help you to know, for instance, what HOAC Lapbooks you may have, but you won't be able to find all the stuff you have to teach the Middle Ages, for instance, without looking in a lot of folders. I keep notebooking pages sorted by topic too, but I also keep all the notebooking pages in a folder in the language arts section. I don't keep any files in My Documents. When I get a new file I put it in the correct folder in the "New" folder For Instance New/Science. When I am ready to back stuff up I open three files: the "New" file, the "Backup" file on my D drive (a section of my hard drive that my husband divided up just for saving my files) and the external drive. I take each of the items and move them from the "New" file into the "Backup" files on the D drive and into the "Backup" files with the same names on my external drive. That way I have each file saved in two places.  I was trying to back up my files weekly but lately it seems more like monthly. In fact it needs to be done now.

In the New Folder, the Backup folder and the External Drive's folders I have the following folders: Administration, Audio Files, Curriculum 01 Other Subjects, Curriculum 02 Science, Curriculum 03 History, Curriculum 04 Other School Stuff, Personal. I have a lot of History and Science stuff so that is why I gave them their own folder.

In the "Backup" files on the D drive and the "Backup" files on my external drive the folders are more detailed. There are folders in folders in folders. I will describe my system below.

In the Administration folder I have folders for: calendars, documents I use for school, goal sheets, High School documents,  school want lists and documents I have made for school

In the Curriculum 01 Other Subjects folder I have folders for: Bible, Building Life Relationships (study of sibling relationships, courtship and character training) Computer, Educational Foundations (study of how to homeschool), Fine Arts, Foreign Language, Home & Life Management (housekeeping, chores, car maintenance, gardening, cooking, shopping, construction, plumbing, etc.), Language Arts, Math and Physical Education.

The Science folder has the following folders in it: Biology, Chemistry, Creation, Earth Science, Mom Made, Multi-subject, and Physical Science. Each of the topics above has folders that further break things down. For example in the Biology folder there are folders for Animals, Biomes, Human Body, Microbiology, Plants and Multi-Subject. In the Animals folder there are folders for: Birds, Dinosaurs, Fish, Insects and Spiders, Mammals, Reptiles and Amphibians, and Microscopic Animals.

The History folder is set up by time period. In order to keep the folders in order by time period and not in alphabetical order I have the folders numbered and then the name. These are my folder names there: 01 General World, 01 Geography, 01 O.T, 01 Timelines, 02 Ancient Egypt, 03 Ancient Greece, 04 Ancient China, 05 Ancient Japan, 06 Ancient Rome, 07 Ancient South America, 07 Ancient Central America, 08 Dark Ages/ Early Middle Ages (395-1050 AD) 08 Vikings, 09 Middle Age, 10 Renaissance/ Reformation/ Explorers, 11 United States History - General, 12 Civics/ American Government, 13 Pilgrims/ Revolutionary War, 14 Expansion/ Early 1800's/ Pioneers, 15 Civil War and Reconstruction Up to 1900, 16 World War I and Early 1900's, 17 World War II and Mid 1900's, 18 Modern Times/ Korean War/ Vietnam War/ Up to Present Day

The Curriculum 04 Other School Stuff folder has folders for: Articles and Tips, Field Trips, High School, Holidays and Seasons, Kindergarten, Library Lists, Preschool and Multi-Topic. In the Multi-topic folder are folders for Clip Art, e-book magazines, Games, Activity/ Coloring/ Assorted school stuff, Charlotte Mason, and a few other things.

That is how I organize my files on my computer.How do you organize your files? Post the answer on your blog and then post a link on Tristan's blog post or post a comment right on Tristan's blog if you answer is short. Here is the link to her post.