Preparing Take 3!

My third child just started Preparing!  This child is not as organized as the others.  She tends to loose things regularly, so I am having to keep on top of her!

This time through, I am trying just one binder without page protectors.  I have only set it up for about 1/3-1/2 of the guide.  When I go to print out more pages, I might have to take out some of the old work.  But that is okay.  Hopefully it will mean she won't have pages stuffed everywhere this way.

For science, I printed out the very simple pages I had made for #2.  Each week they have a science lab, five questions, and a notebooking page (the other day is an oral narration).  For the question day, I have the questions typed out so I can check them without the guide.  For the notebooking pages, I have some lines at the top for the verse.  This keeps their writing a reasonable size while still having them plan most of the page on their own.  And then for the lab day, I have a form typed up.

For history, this time I decided to use one of the files from Facebook.  Most of the pages have basic instructions at the top, leaving the page mostly blank.  I like this option for this child because it is easier for me to check at the end of each unit to confirm everything was done.  With four kids in four guides, I needed an easier way to make sure everything was done.

For timeline, we are continuing the baseball card holder option.  This is so much easier for us to keep and store!

And then at the end of the binder, there is room for her to store any projects.

Outside of the binder, she has three composition books.  One is for dictation, one is for grammar, and the last is for writing.  My kids continue these year after year until they are full. They also each have a journal for their common place book.

Here is a look at her current items in her plastic bin:

And here is her binder:

Preparing Hearts for His Glory

My oldest finished Preparing Hearts for His Glory by Heart of Dakota earlier this month.  We really enjoyed the year!

We started the year doing the guide exactly as written except for math (continuing with Horizons).  As the year went on, a few things got left by the wayside.  First, we gave up "sharing" the poem. A few times she shared with her dad or a grandparent over the phone, but she began to always pick to share with her little siblings.  They weren't overly enthusiastic about listening (since they often hear the poem during the week as we do school), so I didn't require it after a while. Second, we stopped doing the Bible box after Christmas.  When we started back up, we were crunched for time for a few weeks with some outside of the house things, and it just didn't always get done (we would do 2-3 days per unit).  And then in late January/early February, we replaced the box with Awana studying.  My daughter was doing Bible quizzing, so we studied that instead (we had been doing Awana Mission Grace in Action all year, with the regular and silver sections completed).  Here and there we skipped a project or research, but otherwise we completed the whole guide!

As for how we set up everything for the year, here you go!
First, we continued our composition books for grammar (Rod and Staff 4 this year) and dictation.  I again printed the dictation passages and put them in a report folder for my daughter.  This allowed her to mark them as needed - completed, what she missed, things to remember, etc.
We also continued our vocabulary box from Bigger.  So, she again wrote on 3x5 cards and alphabetized them in the file box.
We also bought a nice red journal for a common place book, which we will continue for years to come.
For everything else (except the math and DITHOR workbooks), we used one 2in binder.  It was HUGE!  My daughter complained about how big it was.  So, we won't be going this route again.  But it did work.  We had sections for timeline, history written narrations, independent history, science notebooking, science labs, science five questions, poetry writing, and other.  We used tabs with pockets, so I could store blank paper in the pockets.  For things she would use printer paper for (which was a lot of it), I put page protectors in for filing.  This kept her from having to open the binder prongs too often!  I put the parts where she would use lined filler paper int he middle, as those are the easiest places to fill later.
For timeline, we decided to use baseball card holders instead of the accordion style.  We don't have wall space to store things, and a set of "loose" cards would be easily destroyed.  And it worked great!  I will definitely be doing this with my younger kids.
Here are pictures of the HUGE binder: