Officer Daddyman likes to containerize. We tease him about his collection of bins, particularly clear plastic bins of various sizes. While he really does buy bins with some degree of regularity, he usually does buy them with specific goal in mind, and the purchase typically is precipitated by lots of measuring and sorting. January is a good month for Officer Daddyman, because it’s when all the bins go on sale. I want you to hold all of this in your mind as I continue with this Tuesday’s “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler” post.
I wanted us to start our second semester with reorganized binders. Officer Daddyman wanted us to start with a neat desk. These are both noble goals.
Reorganizing binders meant a lot of sorting into categories, repairing torn notebook paper holes with those little white circle thingies, and generally reshuffling. Officer Daddyman walked into the school room to find me surrounded by piles of papers. His eyes grew wide, and he asked, “Are you keeping all of that?” (Of course, I immediately told him I’d be blogging that).
Today’s question, from Officer Daddyman is, “Are you keeping all of that?”
The short answer: No.
The long answer: While I’m not required to produce records for what we’ve covered, I want to keep them anyway. Keeping records does not, however, mean keeping every scrap upon which Captain Science ever scribbled a math problem. My keep file boils down to this:
The “dispose of” pile included all the “your turn to play” sections from Life of Fred, rough drafts of essays, old history vocabulary and timeline stuff (since we pretty much ditched that), and any scribbles, doodles, or scratch paper. Trust me, the “dispose of” pile was much larger than the “keep” pile.
Now the [Smrt] Homeschooler has a question for you? What do you keep? What papers are you required to hang on to for continued homeschooling on the up-and-up? What do you keep for personal records?
