Organizing Kid Papers

My kids love to draw and color. We also have mailboxes and they love to send mail to us and to each other. The problem is what do we do with all of their papers? I can't throw away anything that I know they spent time and effort on. I had piles and piles of their papers in boxes and bins and finally came up with a solution. I am making them into books. I have a binding machine that I love. So I made covers for their art work and for their letters they send in the mailboxes and I bound all that I have right now. I can bind up to 300 pages in each book. They are so organized now and the kids can look through them. The only thing I need to do better is put dates on them since none of them have dates. I made covers for them with my laminating machine (I can't find the link). That way the covers are strong. I think a binding and a laminating machine are so useful for homeschooling. I make the kids workbooks with them too. When I have my camera again I will take some pictures of them.

We have been on a vacation from school for the last 6 weeks. I am hoping to start up again in a week or so. I like school year round because we can take mini breaks and days off at other times of the year. I liked teaching year round and having a month off every 3 months. I have decided that Mondays will be reading days. We will spend time reading books. The kids love to pick out 5 or 6 books each for me to read to them, but it never seems like we have the time to read as much as we should. So Monday is the designated reading day. I will sit and read for as long as they want to. Tuesday - Thursday I want to have school as we were doing it before. Friday is the designated game day. We have a lot of great games that we never have time for. So now on Fridays we can play games for a few hours. The kids love Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Checkers, Zingo, Memory, The Hungry Caterpillar Game, The Grouchy Ladybug Game, Sorry, etc. I am thinking of having a day out every week to go to a park, museum, etc., but maybe I will just try to get us out once a week on whatever day we can.

Cassandra has been able to write her name for a few months. I scanned it to post but I can't find the scan on the computer. Her name is so long but she remembers every letter. I am very proud of her.