TOPIC:
What do you do with past years' kids' schoolwork? How do you organize the text books used for school throughout the year? By subject or by grade for each subject?
ANSWERS:
I have a wide magazine holder labelled for each child and myself (from Ikea). Each child has their daily work books (Math, Writing, Bible, Science) in their folder and I have my teacher manuals and devotion book in mine. I like it because each child grabs their folder off the shelf and comes to the table and it is all there. If your subjects didn't all fit into one you could divide it up into two folders (i.e. am work & pm work). They look neat and organized too when they are all lined up the shelf which brings a little calm to my hectic life.
I organize books which are not currently being used by subject (a shelf for science, a shelf for nature study, 4 shelves for history, etc). Now that my students are getting older I have merged our non-fiction books together and don't separate the children's books from the adult's. As for the books being used currently, my daughter has a shelf in the bookcase by her desk and my son has a box under his desk and shelf space nearby. Past years' work is filed in a binder which each child organizes at the end of every term.
I tend to throw out math and language stuff. I keep art, poetry and lapbooks or other projects for a few years. After some years I may again re-assess what I will keep and what not as we can't keep everything. We like to organize our subjects in separate books. I have a rubbermaid drawer stacker. Each of the kids have their own drawer and keep all of their books in this. We pull it out for the week and they put it away on weekends.