Just Enough and Nothing More

Where Education and Parenting Collide

The Organized Homeschooler

3 December 2009 10 Comments

Can a person’s organizational skills make or break homeschooling?

Over at a blog called “Learnin’ to Play Piano” (which I wonder if it’s even a real blog, since the content seems automatically generated), there is a post called “Attention Parents: Do You Make These Mistakes In Homeschooling?”

It’s actually a pretty decent article. Whoever wrote it is a real homeschooler, and not a homeschooling tutor or education specialist who “knows a lot of homeschoolers” but doesn’t actually homeschool themselves. No, a real homeschooler wrote this.

For the most part, I agree with the list. But I have on quibble - the topic of organization.

I am told that if my school room is not organized, well, bad things will happen. It’s a mistake not to be organized.

I wonder, is this really true? How organized does one need to be to get along in homeschooling? And does one need to have a room dedicated to school to be organized?

Our home is fairly organized. Not tidy, not neat, but organized. Everything generally has a home, even if that home is a big pile in the corner. (Now, that’s not to say that things always end up in their home, and that’s why we end up looking for a pair of shoes that should be in the (messy) shoe rock for 15 minutes while we’re trying to rush out the door to a class.) So, I guess I’m organized.

However, I’m not organized in any sense that I have their school schedule all set up, nor am I organized enough to keep the kids’ rooms clean (or my own really). I usually have to kick things aside to get to the bed or the closet.

So, I could easily compare myself to a Martha Stewart mom and say, without a doubt, that I’m not organized enough.

But I feel pretty darn put together in the sense that I don’t see looming in front of me that horrible path of failure that I was warned would suck me in if I wasn’t organized properly.

So, let’s talk organization.

Does it make or break a homeschool?
What does it mean to be organized?
Do we berate ourselves about being organized too much?
Are we trying to be the size 0 Kate Moss of organization when most of us would probably die of starvation if we tried to be that size?

10 Comments »

Mel said:

I’m not a homeschooler (although I may become one-my kids are only 1 and 2 now), but it seems to me that the level of organization you need to homeschool should be roughly equal to the level of organization you need to run your life smoothly. For me that level of organization is fairly high, but it’s different for everyone.
Mel´s last blog ..Cut your own tree

# 3 December 2009 at 6:45 pm

Faith said:

I am very disorganized. That’s why I tell folks if I can homeschool, anyone can homeschool. I am convinced I have undiagnosed ADD. I can’t achieve the level of organization of most folks and even if I could I know I couldn’t stay that way for any length of time (a week? HAH!) to save my life. I just wasn’t handed that particular gene when it was being distributed.

Every day there is something that we can’t find. Usually more than something, a read aloud (we were reading it in the living room yesterday, right? So why isn’t it in the living today? Gremlins???) or pencils! One day we’ll have 20 pencils all over the kitchen and dining room tables but the next day when we decide to pull out our dusty math workbooks, no pencils can be found! Vanished into thin air!
All of ‘em!

It is very frustrating but I guess we’ve learned to cope. We wind up reading something else or doing math orally!

The part I liked about the article was about breaks. I find it much easier to weave formal learning in and out of other stuff and informal learning throughout the day. While I do like to get the little bit of seatwork we do with the youngest two done in the morning, to me it is much more natural feeling and less stressful to find pockets of time throughout the day to tuck in different tasks/activities/topics. I used to try to get everything done in the a.m. but I’d be so exhausted by the end of the morning and so cranky from it that the afternoon would be spent hiding from my children! So I relaxed about it. We do our learning (formal and informal) all during the day and all over the house. That probably adds to my disorganization but it works for us!

Blessings,

Faith
Faith´s last blog ..Advent School

# 4 December 2009 at 4:07 am

Carol said:

If I could reclaim all the time we spend / have spent looking for things I could add years onto my life (literally). So, no…I don’t feel that we are organized. And we don’t keep to a rigid or flacid schedule. And yet….my kids are educated, happy, and knowledgable kids. I don’t ever anticipate any of them attending school and I do see that we’re in it for the long haul (my eldest is in 11th grade). And yet…many of the most organized homeschoolers I’ve known ended up putting their kids in school. They see me and they say, “We don’t know how you do it!” And some of them were homeschool “experts” when they homeschooled….wrote articles, gave lectures, the whole bit….telling others how to get organized. And then? Apparently they woke up one morning and realized they couldn’t keep to their own schedules and therefore threw in the towel. So, maybe we can’t find out towels but we know how to keep going anyway :). One day or one interest or one kid at a time.
Carol´s last blog ..Pumpkin Bombings - Just Another Thanksgiving Tradition

# 4 December 2009 at 9:08 am

tracey said:

Interesting point about being too organized. We homeschool and I often question if I should be more focused on an end result instead of living in the moment as we do. We tend to focus on accomplishing the task in front of us instead of wondering where we’re going with it all…
tracey´s last blog ..Brilliant ways to save a little cash this Christmas…

# 4 December 2009 at 6:31 pm

Jill Lee said:

When I think about the concept of organization a little anecdote pops up in my mind. It was in my AVID(”Advancement Via Individual Determination”) class that made us do all kinds of organizational stuff that supposedly helps low-income students get into colleges with activities like taking ‘Cornell notes,’ which are proven to improve a student’s memory retention, in every one of our classes even if it just seemed like there was no viable way to take notes in a ceramics class where we were throwing pots or a math class in which we already took notes separately or a class in which the teacher was absent so we just hung around. On that day, it was, I don’t know, a tutorial session where we bring a slip of paper with a question forced into existence on very obvious things so that we could recite it to our peers and have them recite the answer or make up some baloney ‘new philosophical Socratic idea’ and make it look like we were learning something very interactively. I had misplaced that little piece of paper that was vital to the survival of my grade. It wasn’t in the particular binder that I knew it was supposed to be in. So I had to take out all my folders of unique coloring for organizational purposes and go through all the loose leaf papers in those. I had to get out the matching notebooks for each subject and look through the used and new pages. I had to get out my lead-stained binder with color-coded tabs of 20 and go through the paper secured in between the tabs and loose in the double pockets. As I sifted through frantically and cursed at myself for being so disorganized and forgetful, one of the teachers walked by to supervise. “Looking for your paper?” “Yeah… haha.” *sift sift sift* “Well it’s a good thing that you’re so organized.”

# 4 December 2009 at 9:28 pm

Rosemary Thomas said:

I guess it’s up to the individual family as to how much organization is required. Our family is completely disorganized in a lot of ways, but it works so well for us that I really can’t complain. We work together to keep the kitchen and the bathroom up to pretty much anybody’s definition of “safe and sanitary” but the rest of our house is very lived in and comfortable.

We get up in the morning when everyone’s had enough rest - rarely do we set alarms. Everyone has a set routine of household chores, which takes us about 30 minutes to accomplish. Then we are done. There’s life to live! I can’t really worry about home decorating or scrupulous cleaning when there’s things I can be learning and doing. Our method works well for us, so there you go.

One of my children has a hard time keeping up with her things, especially things which are school related, such as pencils and notebooks, so she has a box which she totes around the house, because she likes to move around the house. The other one keeps all of her books and so forth in one place because she likes to study in only one place. So, which one is organized? They are differently-organized, heh.

At various times, we’ve used one room for a “learning room” and at those times, it was nice. Then as kids got older, they outgrew the need, and this is nice, too. No, you don’t need a school room, but for some folks, it is nice.

I say that homeschoolers should do what works for them, but be aware that needs change, such as our need for a focused school room. Go with the flow is the best homeschooling advice I can offer.

Cheers!
Rosemary
Rosemary Thomas´s last blog ..Listen while you knit!

# 5 December 2009 at 12:05 am

Liese4 said:

We are organized, I guess. We have a school room, though we may not always do school there. But, the kids have a bin by their desk with all books that pertain to their school and a bookcase next to that that has everything else. Library books are in a bin by the fireplace and they don’t leave the room for long (or we lose them!) We usually do school in the morning so we can play the rest of the day, so I guess that is being organized.

I schedule things like field trips, park days, kids clubs, library visits, so we know when we have time to do other things. I know how frustrating it is to be looking for a pen, paper or compass when you are trying to do work, so I know where everything is in the storage room in case we run out around the house. I can say go get the paper it’s on the 2nd shelf in the storage room. I hate interrupting learning to go find a book or an item that we need.

Our favorite saying we’ve made up is this:
In structure there is freedom. I know that sounds weird at first, but if I know that park day is on Wed. then I have the freedom to do school in the morning or know that I can not do something that day because it’s already taken up.

# 5 December 2009 at 8:07 am

arulba said:

“Too”??? I hate that word! I am nothing if not “too” organized. It’s a hindrance. But I wonder - what does homeschooling have to do with an organized school room?

My kids didn’t go back to school because I was too organized. They went back to school because they wanted to experience school. My daughter didn’t come back home from school because I was organized, she came back home because for her, being in school was like being in prison - ultra-organized and inflexible. Home meant flexibility.

I was probably an unschooler before she went back to school in 8th grade. We both agreed that wouldn’t work for her high school years. So now we’re experimenting with many types of organization to see what works.

If organization is inflexibility, then I’m not organized. But if organization includes lots of flexibility, then that’s me. Every thing has a place and every place has it’s things. But if it’s not working, I’ll happily change it. (We had a homeschooling room in the early years of homeschooling but it lasted all of 4 months!)
arulba´s last blog ..QofD: Spirituality is Unlearning

# 8 December 2009 at 1:10 am

John McGeough said:

I loved your post. One of my things is the organization of information. I am an information junkie I suppose you would say. Currently, I am intrigued by the idea of creating our own texts and references off the internet. You have inspired me. Thanks so much
John McGeough´s last blog ..Developing internet Textbooks for home schooling or independent learning

# 21 December 2009 at 9:29 pm

Cara said:

I have a quote on my fb home which i now cannot remember where I found: “I’ve never told a mom she was too disorganized to homeschool (although I’ve thought to myself that some were so organized their kids might be happier in school). ”

I’ve only been home schooling for 4 months now. I also think i’m un-dx’d adhd . . .but also ocd . . . anyways, I have a super hard time staying on top of things, but i try to keep afloat. My 13 yo (who DOES have a string of dx’s) NEEDS to be tightly scheduled, so during the regular year (we’re on break now), i make a weekly schedule for him, and each morning i make a daily check-list to the level of ’set timer for 30 minutes; work through math book; set timer for 30 minutes; get me for grammar work; lunch break’

my 6 yo hates to be organized, tho, so in the beginning of the day, I tell him what I need him to get done, and we get it done before 2:30 when ’school is out’ (video games are back on)

I’m surving, and the boys are happy, but its too early to call it an educational success - tho my dh who was originally not supportive, says its defintely and improvement for the 13 yo . . . at least as far as not getting all those calls from school

# 22 December 2009 at 8:37 pm