Managing Electronic Books and Curriculum

I use a lot of electronic resources for homeschooling because they are free or cheaper than their printed counterpart.   With the wealth of resources available online, your downloads folder can quickly fill up with files that you may forget you have and thus never use.

I’ll try to show you how I manage all those electronic resources.

I do this in four steps:

* First, organize the books or curriculum into electronic file folders that make sense. In my case I sorted by grade and subject and changed any cryptic file names to make it obvious what the content is  (book title, etc)

* Second, purge what we won’t ever use. In our case it was all of those faith based freebies and stuff that I tried with Shammy and didn’t like enough to keep for my second child.

* Third, include the items when taking inventory of school supplies.  I use Evernote for this but there are also printable logs for this available online or you can just use a notebook.

* Fourth, print out those e-documents that we’ll be using or give kids access to them on their devices so the info can be viewed electronically. Shammy now has a Chromebook and iPad for school use so I add the documents to the cloud for him to access them on it.

It’s also necessary to organize the tangible materials and supplies that you have at home.  Otherwise it’s easy to forget to use it.  Taking inventory will allow you to have an at a glance reference of what you have, to see what you may still need without having to search through closets and cabinets.

1) Be ruthless. This is especially important if space is an issue. Is it worth it to keep a bag full of art supplies if you won’t use any of them this year (especially if it takes up a whole cabinet)?

2) Be practical. At the same time, be willing to consider items from your stash as substitutes for planned (but not yet purchased) school curriculum. But only keep them if you will honestly use them and give them a try. Remember, you can always try it out and get another item later if this one doesn’t work!

3) Be patient. Give yourself time to go through these school supplies and to take inventory. It may take several sessions over several days (or weeks!), depending on how many children you have and how much stuff you need to inventory and/or purchase.