The best homeschool organization tip ever? Evernote! It’s seriously the best app. Today I’m going to walk you through exactly how I organize our entire homeschool with the Evernote app so you can get organized too.
If you’re unfamiliar with Evernote, it’s basically an online note taking app and is probably the best thing ever for homeschooling moms. You can read all about it here.
First, if you don’t already have the Evernote app, head over to the Apple or Android App Store (or wherever you get your apps) and download it. Create an account with your email and password.
Next, it’s time to start organizing your homeschool by creating your first notebook. Simply tap the “new notebook” button and label it. Think of these notebooks like individual spiral notebooks. You know, those plain spirals at Walmart for .10 during back to school season?
Yeah, welcome to the digital version. For FREE!
How to use Evernote
Some notebooks I have in my homeschool are:
- General notes (of course) For all those random things I discover regarding homeschooling
- Planning Everything having to do with planning my homeschool year. Schedules, calendars, routines and rhythms…
- Book lists All the book lists I come across that I want to read aloud or assign, classics, seasonal, etc.
- Morning basket All the subjects I cover in our morning basket and the corresponding activities/printable, etc
- Loop schedules A master notebook of all the loop schedules we work through (currently there’s 3)
- Cycle 1 Science Activities This has to do with Classical Conversations and the supplemental science activity ideas/plans for each week
- Records (1 for each child) A weekly breakdown of all we accomplished for each child in a school year
- Yearbook I haven’t actually used this notebook yet but my plan *eventually* is to use this space to save photos throughout the school year as a yearbook.
- Unit Study All the ideas and plans for unit studies I create
All these notebooks are housed under the “Homeschool” stack. So a “stack” is just a way to further organize your notebooks.
Once you’ve created all your notebooks, you’re ready to start filling them up with notes! If you’re a little confused, think of it like a filing system.
Evernote lingo
The “stack” is the filing cabinet, the “notebooks” are the individual hanging files, and the “notes” are the papers found in each file.
For example, in my homeschool stack (filing cabinet), under the morning basket notebook (file folder), I have a note (paper) for each subject in our morning basket that contains all the info and resources I need for that subject.
Obviously you can organize this however it makes sense to you. You can also create as many stacks as you want. Want to have a stack for each child? You can put notebooks in each child’s stack based on subject. Then put notes into each subject like curriculum choices, activities, etc that pertain to each child. Really, the sky’s the limit on how you can customize this to your homeschool!
Conclusion
This is truly how I organize my ENTIRE homeschool online. I’m almost completely digital now. I do have a physical notebook with things like our weekly memory work, hymns, and school calendar (even though I have a copy of this in Evernote). But sometimes I just prefer the feel of paper between my fingers…
I think I will switch entirely over to digital notes one day just because it takes up less space. When we are all at one end of the table, my big ole notebook sure does get in the way. The transition will be pretty seamless though because all I’ll have to do is snap a picture of my notes and save it to a new notebook! Pretty awesome huh?!
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