Preschool Planning & Filing System

Last week, I showed you the printable that I use for planning preschool activities with Andyroo. This week, I'm going to show you how I put the printable to work for me and the system I use to keep myself organized. It's ridiculously easy - and cheap!

This is a simple rubbermaid-type container that I've had sitting around for years - since high school, I think. It wasn't holding anything important (some old ugly scrapbooking paper, some page protectors, etc) so I threw out the unnecessary stuff and put it to good use!

Starting from the front, it contains:

1. An extra notebook for paper purposes. I don't have any filler paper, so if I need to add anything to the folders or write down ideas, I just use the notebook, tear it out, then put it in the appropriate folders.

2. A file folder with extra blank preschool planning pages and tabs. That way if I get an idea for another "unit" I can easily add it to my files.

3. Various 3-pronged pocket folders that hold all the ideas and plans that I've found that need a home. Each one is tabbed and marked so that I can easily see which folder it is when I open the box.

The folders that I purchased (for $0.05/ea during the back to school sales!!) have the whole ridge thing on the side. I had leftover sticky post-it tabs from my coupon binder that so I cut them down and stuck them in the middle.

As a plus, the tabs are erasable/rewritable, so if I ever need to change out what's in the folder, I can easily just change the tab. The tabs are also removable so I can easily move them around or take them off if the need ever arises.

Inside the folder, I have a planning sheet for each of the items written on the tab. So using the folder above, I have a sheet for: Into to the Alphabet, The Letter A, The Letter B, & the Letter C. I'm still accumulating stuff, but if I find something online that I want to print out or copy, I just slip it into a page protector that is behind each planning page.

I chose to add the page protectors so I wasn't always having to 3-hole punch everything and shuffle papers around to get it in the right place.

4. Various preschool (and older) workbooks that I've found. Keeping them in one place makes it handy to find when I need to pull them out.

5. Extra page protectors (you can't see them in this pic) for adding to the folders.

When we're going to be learning about something new, I can easily find the folder with all the information. Easy enough, right!? And super cheap (at least in my case) too!!! Yay!

Preschool Planner Printable

We're kind of in a tough spot right now. I really think Andyroo would benefit from preschool, but we don't have the money for it and I don't want to commit to a program (that someone else is doing) and then have to back out in a few (*fingers crossed*) months when Hubs gets a job. I don't want to leave someone high and dry with the loss of income or something that like that.

So, instead of sending him out for preschool, I've been looking for options and ideas for doing preschool for him here at home. I've found TONS and TONS of resources (which I'll do another post on later) and I'm trying to kind of narrow down what I want to do. There's so much information out there that it's a little overwhelming. My head starts spinning just thinking about all the possibilities. I can handle the head-spinning if I have a place to organize myself - something where I can write down everything and reference it later.

And that's where my new printable comes into play.

It's nothing fancy and colorful (I'd end up printing in B&W anyway), but it gets the job done. And I'm really happy with this method. I have plenty of space to write and different catories to utilize. And no "dates" to make me feel locked in. Afterall, what if I really don't want to talk about birds one day? What if I want to skip ahead or just skip it all together. It must be something about calendars, but i always wind up feeling like a failure if I didn't accomplish something that was written on the calendar. So no dates - though if you prefer, you could write it into either of the top two spaces, or anywhere else on the page.

Before I created this, I was using a calendar to map out exactly what we were going to do when. It was just a printed monthly calendar. Writing so tiny I can barely read it is not my idea of easy. And it was so cluttered that I just stopped using it. It didn't have any really pertinent information so I still had to go lookup things elsewhere. I was able to write 2 or 3 words about the activity or idea and then either a book or website abbreviation. I need more than that! Needless to say, that method only lasted a couple of weeks before I stopped using it.

Want to use this for your own preschool ideas? Of course you do! Just click here to download the PDF file from google docs. If you do use it, let me know what you think - any improvements or changes that need to be made?

Next week, I'll be showing you the filing system I actually use for all of our preschool stuff. Be sure to come back and check it out!