Cleaning, Organizing, Prepping, and Letting Go

With only one week until we begin our school year, I have been very busy cleaning out our old school stuff and organizing and planning the new school year. I'm feeling pretty good about my small successes this week.

1) I cleaned out and then restocked all our school cupboards and shelves. I also filed last years school work, in case the nanny state comes a knocking. Normally I only keep one year's worth of work, and then it gets tossed holus bolus, once I have my portfolio review with the county. The only exception to this is I do keep all four years of high school work for our high schoolers, especially any tests or papers they have written in case we need to send examples of their work to prospective colleges. I have a file box for each high schooler with their work neatly organized into years and subjects. For each quarter I also file their grades for each subject and have a running transcript with their final grades in each subject, grade point average, etc.

2) If you fly with the FlyLady, we are in the living room this week. Our living room stays fairly clutter free, so other than dusting and washing fingerprints off windows, there is rarely much in that room for me to accomplish. Our computer/family room, on the other hand, is a veritable pigsty. This week I tackled this room with a vengeance. The computer desks have been de-cluttered above and below. I cleaned out and re-organized our art supply boxes and I'm in the process of eliminating baby toys from Lil' Wingnut's toy box of horrors.

3) I am so excited about history with the three girls this year. I have been planning, prepping and dreaming for our foray into ancient history. This week I made history notebooks for Skoshi A and Oleander. They are divided into 5 sections each: the first has a pre-printed timeline of ancient history that we will be adding important events and people to throughout the year; the second will have our black line maps to be colored and filled out; the third is for important people--rulers, inventors, artists, writers, heroes, etc.; the fourth is for descriptions of various cultures we will be studying--food, art, clothing, etc.; and the fifth is for the theology of each culture--beliefs about gods, life and death, origins of life, etc. These notebooks should turn out to be wonderful tools for learning and will be terrific end products for the girls' portfolios.

4) I've had such a productive week I need to post 4 successes today. My last success has to do with letting go. Karate Kid is getting closer to fulfilling all her requirements for getting her driver's license. She has nearly 40 of the 60 required hours behind the wheel, and this week she will have completed her 6 hours of driving with an instructor. She is really hoping to get her license in October and Wingnut and I are working hard at helping her reach that goal. It has been hard for me to believe and accept that we will soon have a teen driver in our family. I'm getting closer to accepting and welcoming that fact.

So, what are your small successes this week? Head over to Faith and Family Live and post yours with the rest of the Small Successes gang.