If you’re diving into your Abeka curriculum, you already know it’s packed with amazing resources and structured lessons. It honestly includes everything you need to provide your kids with a high quality Christian homeschool education, which is why we totally love it! But keeping everything organized can sometimes feel very overwhelming. That’s where the binder method comes in, your new best friend for homeschool organization! This is the best way to organize you Abeka Homeschool curriculum. (in my opinion) Let’s walk through how to get your curriculum all set with this super efficient method.
Why the Binder Method is the best organizational system?
- Easy to maintain- There are some organizational systems out there that are very hard to keep up with and maintain through out the entire year. The binder method is extremely easy to maintain and only requires you to update it once every grading period.
- Organization: It keeps your curriculum neat, tidy, and clutter-free. Nothing will ever go missing!
- Easy Access: Everything you need is right at your fingertips. There’s no need to spend time wondering where a certain worksheet or assessment is.
- Portability: You can take learning anywhere with binders that are easy to grab and go.
- Perfect for any grade: I’ve been organizing my kids’ Abeka curriculum from k4 up to 6th grade which is the grade my oldest child is in and am planning to use it for future grades as well.
How to Organize your Abeka Curriculum using the Binder Method
1. Gather Your Supplies
- Binders: Grab a sturdy binder for each subject, or a big one with dividers for all subjects. Aim for 1.5 inch binders. My personal favorite is the Five Start Note Binder. It’s such an amazing binder because it’s durable and it can fold back into a notebook! Which makes it ideal for younger children, especially when they are working on worksheets that have backs to them or writing sheets, so you don’t have to worry about getting them out of the binder. If you are using a regular binder I recommend the Avery Binder because it’s durable and of great quality.
- Dividers: Use tabbed dividers to separate different subjects. The Flex Note Binder already come with some included but if you choose a traditional binder, you can buy durable plastic dividers.
- Sticky Notes or Tabs: The sticky notes will be used to tab all of the student consumables as we divide them into grading periods.
- Three-Hole Punch: A must-have for adding worksheets and notes to your binder. I recommend this 30 page capacity binder that I bought from Amazon several years ago.
- Video Manual– If you are using the Abeka curriculum your video manual is the most amazing parent resource included in your kit. We will be using it to set up our binders too.
2. Organize by Subject and Grading Period
- Parent Video Manual: Take a look at the Progress reports on the back of your video manual. Here you will find what lessons and quizzes/tests are covered in each grading period. On a sheet of paper or you can download my free printable, take note of when is the last lesson, quiz #, and test # in each grading period.
- Create Binder Dividers: Divide the binder according to the subjects that are going to be covered.
- Student Consumables: Gather all of your students consumables for each class. These are the workbooks, tests books, and quizzes books. Tab each consumable with a sticky note on the last lesson or quiz of each grading period. This will let you know up to what point you need to tear pages out.
3. Set-up Your Binder
- Tear out pages: Once you have all of your consumables tabbed, it’s time to tear out all the pages from the books that your child will use during the first reading period. I like to stagger stack them by book to make the process more efficient.
- Hole punch: I like to use a heavy duty hole puncher I purchased from Amazon to quickly hole punch all of my pages.
- Fill in the binder: Now that you have everything ready, it’s time to fill in your entire binder. You will repeat this step every grading period.
I love this system because I simply set it up once for the entire year and the only upkeep I have to do is once a quarter. At the end of the grading period, I simply take out the old work and add in the new work, which only takes me about 10 minutes to do!
If you would like to see how I put it together, I have several YouTube videos showing you how I’ve organized our Abeka curriculum for several grade levels!
How to Organize Abeka:
Many Abeka homeschooling mamas have share with me on YouTube how much they are loving using the Binder System to organize their curriculum. I’m certain you will love it too. You will see how nothing will ever go missing again, you won’t have to worry about keeping track of a bunch of papers, and grading will become so much smoother.
💖 Yessi
PS. If you try out this method please let me know how it worked out for you! I always love hearing from you 🤗
