When our books arrived, I put washi tape on the bindings and labeled the books as before. The binding edge has the subject the book is used for (H=History, St=Storytime, Sc=Science) unless it is only one or two books for a subject for the whole year. I left those bindings blanks. Then on the front cover part of the tape I wrote out the subject and labeled what units it is used for. This helps me make sure the right books are out in her bins in the living room at any given time. The rest stay in our office on the bookshelf.
The second binder is science. Last year, my daughter routinely tried to skip science notebooking. So this year, I made pages for all of science. You can find these pages in the HOD group. It is notebooking, narration (new for this level - replaced the 5 questions from Preparing and CtC), and lab report. A few times through the year there are special assignments. When they do the Voskamp book for example, there are "post cards" they complete. So the file I created has a large rectangle to represent that. For the Tiner book at the end, there are questions from the book they answer. I typed those out so we have a better record (some are multiple choice, so having a page with letters on it is not helpful for record keeping). I hole punched all of the pages, but none are actually in the binder normally yet. The first 10 units I put in the front pocket. The rest I split between page protectors in the back (10 units per page protector). When I page is complete and checked, then it will go in the binder "officially."
The third binder is for a boxes that rotate each unit: Shakespeare, art, geography, and poetry. The Shakespeare and art portions of the binder are the notebooking pages for those two subjects from HOD. The art ones come with the history, and the Shakespeare ones are an additional item. For geography, I printed all of the student maps from the CD that we will need (there is a file int he Facebook group listing the maps by unit). I wrote what unit they were used for and then hole punched them and put them in a sheet protector like I did for science. We will file them when they are done. For poetry, I printed the pages from the Facebook group. I don't know if I will make her fill them all out, but we are going to start that way. I think it is intended to be more oral. But, she often forgets to come to me. So, a sheet she can fill in OR bring to me to fill in with her verbal answers will probably be helpful. We will see how that goes.
The last binder I realized she needed as we started Unit 1. And that binder is for writing. I possibly could have fit this in another binder, but because they were already done, I just made a 4th binder. The first thing I put in where the pages from the online student notebook that they will need this year. They are Stylistic Techniques, Strong Verbs, -ly Adverbs, Quality Adjectives, Five Senses and Emotions, Proofreading Marks and Symbols, and Abbreviations for Note-Taking. Then I counted the number of "papers" they were going to write, and I put a page protector in for each plus a few extra (about 20 total). The last few assignments will probably be more than 1 page, but I don't know if they will be more than 2 pages (and hence needing 2 page protectors). We already have a composition book that she will use for her rough drafts, so that is all that will be in this binder.
There is one more thing I created, and that is a "book" of the teacher maps for geography. I printed them on cardstock, double sided. Then, I put them in individual page protectors. Then I put the page protectors into a report cover to make a book. I can then reuse this book for all of my kids.
We plan on using the guide basically as is. The two exceptions are math (continuing with Horizons through Grade 6 at least) and the devotional Bible study. I have decided to wait on the devotional Bible study until she is a little older. She is only 10 and pushing to be grown up enough as is. I think I Bible study that talks even more about maturing emotionally isn't necessary at this point. Instead, during that time, she will work on Awana (when it starts) and study a chapter of the Bible (our church has been doing a chapter a week). We will probably do the little pamphlets on the physical changes of maturity at the end of the year though.
