Yearly Fact Sheets

I have been busily working in the schoolroom...organizing and preparing for a new school year.  I am hoping to post pictures soon!  But I need to address a few piles first.  Projects just have a way of piling-up in here!  I shy away from some either for the amount of time it will take or because I'm just not sure how I want to go about it.  I avoided this particular project for both reasons!  I have been saving all the kids' work for the past several years, along with notes about special activities or accomplishments.  And I needed to convert this large pile into some portfolios.  Well, I did it!  And I'm pretty please with how it turned out. 

The kids picked out their cover picture.  (I haven't started Little Squirt's yet.)  I found these Avery Classic Presentation Books on sale at the store one day a couple of years ago, and I
just knew they
would come in handy for something!  They have a nice vinyl cover with pocket for your cover page.  Bound inside are 12 sheet protectors.  Now, I didn't intend this to be a portfolio that shows off their work.  Rather a fact sheet of the details of each year. 

As it turns out, I still have my pile of schoolbooks that I'd like to transfer into a portfolio of their work.  I was thinking of giving each of them a large 3-ring binder for Language Arts and Arithmetic.  And then adding dividers for each year.  Then I'd just need to go through the agonizing task of choosing which papers to add in each section.  I left off History and Science because they will make a new History notebook each year in My Father's World and I am hoping to start a Science notebook this year somewhat following the ideas in The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer.  But for now, I am happy with what I have accomplished!  Now that it's started, it will be easy to add to each year.  And I am content to move my box to the closet to await another day.  A day when the new school year isn't looming over me...13 days and counting!