Figuring out the best way to organize my Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool curriculum was one of the trickier aspects of my homeschool preschool experience. Eventually, I figured out what worked best for me, and I wanted to share that with you.

As you may know, homeschooling is a struggle with me because I have ADHD. Any extra planning required on a daily basis equals schooling that doesn’t happen. I wanted my preschool curriculum to be very much open-and-go, without daily (or even weekly!) planning, printing, or coordinating. The system I figured out works to my advantage perfectly. Whether you’re an ADHD mother trying to homeschool, or have several other kids to juggle while homeschooling your preschooler, this is an ideal way to get your homeschool set up!

First, I started with a file box. This is a Sterilite Showoffs File Box. (This is an affiliate link that will take you to a super cute green version, I like it even better than my orange box!) I love these boxes, I have several. In the file box I have 5 hanging file folders, and within those I have 5-6 tabbed folders. The first file folder has a folder for reusable worksheets (more about this later), then it holds a file for each letter of the alphabet. The remaining hanging file folders hold the remaining letters of the alphabet.

Disclosure: The above paragraph contains affiliate links. They are products I’ve used personally in preparing my preschool.

Since the Walk Beside Me LDS preschool schedule uses “preschool pages” (i.e., worksheets from a book or found online), I stick in the Reusable Worksheets file anything that doesn’t belong to a certain letter. If I had pulled out a ‘shapes tracing’ activity from a workbook but used a sheet protector and a dry erase marker, that can be used again and filed. If I didn’t get to it that week and want to pull it out some other time, that can be used again. I won’t remember unless I stick it in that front folder. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about what’s in each folder.

In each file folder, I place everything I will need for school that week. It is all laminated (if I desired to laminate it!) In the image below you can see my preschool schedule, all the worksheets, puzzles pasted onto cardstock that were laminated and cut out, a book of the week, and extra worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler that coordinate with that letter. I had considered laminating the schedule onto the folder itself, but I just didn’t get around to doing that this time. I even cut out all the letters for these fun letter activities and placed all their parts in a baggie. At one point we had our Bob Books stored in each of the folders too, but they’ve since been taken out to be stored in the cute box they came in.

I could have broken my folders even further into days. In this scenario I would have had a hanging file folder for each week (like J pictured above) and then a tabbed folder for each of the three days scheduled. This would have made filling Nicole’s workboxes a breeze. HOWEVER. Flexibility was my friend here. With the system as is with one weekly folder, I easily flipped through each of the worksheets and decided what I wanted to do that day. If we happened to have a lazy busy week, I could combine some extra worksheets and remove extra activities to make a two-day schedule happen. I didn’t want to feel like I was falling behind at any point. That was the deciding factor for making this work for me. If you like the super organized feeling, or don’t want the pressure flexibility of deciding on a whim what printables you’ll be doing on what day, then I would organize your folders just like the schedule outlines with a folder for each day.

This system was perfect for me. I really felt like I had control over how much school we did on a given week, but I never felt like I was ‘behind’ or had any guilt for skipping over activities. The best part of this system was at the end of the week, I just put everything back in the file folder. If you’re good at remembering to refile things, and don’t like the ‘used worksheets’ mixed in with the ‘unused worksheets’ for the week, you could make an extra file for what you’ve already done that week. I didn’t have much of a problem with this, and had a box on my desk for any papers I wanted to keep in her memory binder.

Now you know the key to Slacker Mom homeschooling: have everything prepared beforehand, so you have little excuse for procrastinating! Bonus: I’ve got 90% of preschool prepared for my next daughter, since everything got re-filed!

 How do you organize your preschool or homeschool? Do you think this system would work for you?

It thrills me to no end that we’ve completed the Walk Beside Me LDS Preschool homeschool curriculum. It was a huge goal of mine that I worried (many, many times) I wouldn’t ever accomplish. Hate to brag (ha, right), but I’m so proud of myself for completing it. I’m happy my little girl loved it and learned so much during the year about her ABC’s, as well as wonderful Gospel stories.

My question for you is…
what’s next?

I have many ideas, and hopefully at least one solid idea in the works. I’d like to know though, what would you like to see as a follow up to the Walk Beside Me Preschool? I have toyed with the idea of reformatting the alphabet to include only short sounded vowels, (keep A is for Adam, change E is for Enoch) then make five additional weeks to the curriculum that are focused on the long sounded vowels.
{I’m having trouble coming up with gospel themes for short e, i, o, and u sounds though!}

While I’m happy to do that, provided I can think of some Gospel themes to match those letters (any suggestions?), for the most part, I’d like to move on. My daughter is ready for Kindergarten level work, and I’d like to keep the gospel theme going. Ideally I can incorporate the Gospel into all of our years of homeschool, whether I create the curriculum or not!

What would you like to see as a follow up to Walk Beside Me Preschool? Would you be interested in a long vowels addition, or are you ready to move on too? What about a ‘tot school’ version of Walk Beside Me? Leave a comment and vote for one of these options, or even better, suggest your own!

If you’re new here and want to learn more about my LDS-based Gospel curriculum for preschoolers, go to the FAQ page here, the Introduction page here, or A is for Adam here!

Thank you all so much. I’m so excited to hear what you have to say about this! 

{Click the picture to download the schedule.}

Here’s a few notes of explanation:

• I run our “preschool” based on a 3 day a week program, with 8 workboxes.
• I find my daughter works best if I sneak a snack (ooh, that’s fun to say) into one of the boxes too, but that’s probably because I don’t get around to doing school till almost lunchtime!
• If there are online activities or printables, I’ve included links to those. Any craft or idea that is not my own, I do not feel comfortable packaging with the curriculum! Please inform me if any of the links are broken!
• I typically begin the day with a “preschool page.” This comes from a standard preschool workbook that I tear out. You can pick them up virtually anywhere, including the dollar store!
• “Walk Beside Me” obviously refers to my curriculum. I generally schedule 9 worksheets from my curriculum in a week, though I create anywhere from 8-11 in a set. This gives me room to be a little flexible.
• The Uppercase Alphabet craft and Lowercase Alphabet craft comes from Totally Tots. I have been meaning to use my Cricut to cut all the letters out in one shebang, and prepare little craft kits to stick in her week folder. Hasn’t happened yet, but I know I need to or we’ll never do it.
• The Tracing/Cutting/Pasting activities I picked up at a great deal from Sam’s Club, but you can also order them from Amazon. These books are darling and Nicole loves them.
• BOB Books refers to the amazing early reader books that teachers praise. Again, another score from Sam’s Club (mine came with two sets for not much more than the price of one set), and Nicole is doing really well with them. We do one book a week, same book each day. When she is finished with the Beginning Set I think I will go back and repeat them at least once before moving on to the Advanced Beginning Set.
• A sensory bin is a bin of… stuff that your child can play in. In some weeks, I have listed a specific sensory bin idea or activity, others are pretty open-ended. For C is for Colors, you could put lots of colorful items in for your child to explore, perhaps with rainbow colored rice! Google sensory bin and you will come up with more than enough ideas!
• You do not have to have anything that I’ve purchased for my school to make your school work! My husband will be the first to tell you I’m addicted to school supplies! (My bank statement would verify this.) However, if you tellyour husband that you “need” this stuff to do the Walk Beside Me Preschool Curriculum–a completelyfree preschool, you might add–then I’ll back you 100%. Just send him my way! Also, if you purchase through my Walk Beside Me store, you help fund this stay at home mom project!
• I’m also not the Preschool Police, and will have no issue if you adapt to your own needs. However, if you share this without linking back to my site, or claim it as your own… then I’ll have issues. Wait, I have issues. But I will not be happy! Please don’t share the download link only, please refer back to this page.

 Any questions? Any thoughts? Any ideas? Any input?

Any… anything?