Over at the WTM boards, there had been talk about setting up a "teacher notebook." I read the posts and thought "Oh, that's nice." But I really didn't consider putting together my own notebook. I have a tendency to over organize which causes me to burn out before I really get a chance to implement my plans!
However...last year was a rather disrupted year. My husband was in Iraq, we had to sell our house, and we moved clear across the country. I've really been looking forward to and uninterupted school year this year. In the past I had made an assignment sheet for each kid and it really worked. I liked it because it kept us on track; the kids liked it because they knew exactly what was required of them that day. I'd print up the sheet on Mon and the kids would cross off each subject as they completed them. Sadly, there was one flaw in the plan. Each week one of my kids would loose their sheet at least once. It would get very frustrating.
This year as I was planning the kid's assignment sheets the idea of printing them up and having them comb bound for each child started appealing to me. BUT...what would I do if one of them lost their assignments? Faced with this very real and annoying possibility I played with the idea of putting them in a notebook. At the same time I created a weekly supply list for all the materials I'd need for history and science. It's very frustrating having to postpone an experiment just because you don't have a rubber band. Then I started thinking I should go through the STOW 2, print up the corresponding timeline figures, run them through my Xyron sticker maker, put them in weekly envelopes so the kids could find them very easily during history class. I also need to print up the History Scribe sheets that I'm planning on using this year for narrations and paragraph work. (Which Trivium Academy inspired LOTS of us to use on the WTM boards.)
Yep, couldn't deny it anymore...I had been planning my teacher notebook.
On the front of my notebook is a rough schedule so my kids know what subject they are doing and when. It's just a guideline and not set in stone. I slipped in in the front cover of my notebook so the kids can look at it all they want and it wont get lost!!!
I open my notebook up to whatever week we're on, and the first thing I see is what supplies I need. I've pretty much have science done, but I can always write in what we need for history projects later on.
Flip the page, and there we have both kid's schedules. They can look at them, cross off any subjects that they've completed, but
they can't loose them!This is all I've completed so far, and I may not get much more done today becauese I'm going to the American Red Cross to get certified in First Aid and CPR, but hopefully this weekend I'll have a completed notebook to show everyone!
Lesson 24 in Elem Greek. He LOVES learning Greek. As you can see, he's trying very hard to write authentic Kione Greek (no spaces between words!)
He's learning cursive through Handwriting Without Tears. He was pretty worried about learning cursive but so far it's been pretty easy for him. YEA!
We're using Institute for Excellence in Writing. Today Matthew did the three keyword outline and next week we'll work on constructing a paragraph.
Here's Matthew's Singapore 3a work. He's actually is much more advanced in math, but we just switched to Singapore and I want to make sure he understands how Singapore approaches math. He's actually been doing 3 or so exercises a day. This was the last page he did today.
Here's his spelling test. After his test is done, I let him spell the words back to me. He insisted on putting the A+ on the top. 
Here's Matthew doing his science experiment in Singapore Science. He had to list the similarities and differences between the orange and lime. Later he had to do the same thing with a chocolate chip cookie, a cracker and a potato chip. Let's just say we had fun "cleaning up" the science equipment!
