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Schools

Surviving the School Paper Hurricane

Encourage your kids to help keep track of all of those important school memos and treasures.

Have your children’s school papers taken over your kitchen table? 

Do you tend to miss school deadlines for picture money, field trip money, school activities, and such? 

It’s no wonder. 

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, club flyers, news letters, district memos, worksheets and projects kids create come home daily, overwhelming the busy parent. 

Just keeping up with removing these papers from your child’s backpacks can be a challenge for many of us, especially during a busy work week with soccer practice, tennis practice, play dates, and homework to boot.    

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So here are a few tricks to stay afloat this year and reclaim your kitchen table.

Get the kids involved

Every one of the following tasks is more manageable if the kids participate, so don’t try to manage it all alone. 

Kirk Martin, Celebrating Calm founder and behavioral expert, who recently visited , recommends several strategies for parents to avoid anxiety and meltdowns, one of which is to “give kids a specific job.” 

Additionally, he recommends that in handling children, adults need to  “provide specific, concrete responsibilities.”

The specific task of sorting school papers with kids can be fun and it teaches them organizational techniques and personal responsibility.

It might also give you the open door you need to find out more about their day at school since many kids routinely won’t answer direct questions about school.

With papers in hand, they are often more willing to offer insights to school programs and school work.

It’s also a prime time to praise their work or ask those questions they usually won’t answer, such as:  Did you like this assignment?  How do you feel you did on this assignment?  What do you still need help with?    

Designate an inbox/outbox system

Create a common inbox for school papers, agendas, and graded work. 

Ask your children to empty their folders after school each day into the inbox so you can sort through papers easily without having to search through backpacks first. 

It’s best to keep the inbox in an area of your house in which you tend to spend the most time during the week, like the kitchen, so it’s not out of sight and out of mind. 

As you complete the papers needed to return to , drop them into a return to school outbox you’ve created for each child.  

Establish a routine for kids to independently check their baskets and load their folders for school the next day, perhaps before dessert so they get it done for sure.  

Use a dry erase calendar/bulletin board

Near the inbox/outbox system, hang up one of these useful boards to keep up with dates and events.

Field trips, school pizza nights, and more can be added to the calendar each day and the flyer with specific details of the event can be attached to the board for safe-keeping.    

Checking the calendar can become part of the routine as well.

Create a 'Keepers' box

A lot of school work comes home, especially in elementary school, and it can be difficult to toss out and even more difficult to store. 

Rather than having a garage full of Tupperware containers that hold every paper from preschool on until you can sort them, take a quick moment during the daily sorting to purge.

Toss worksheets and work that needed a simple glance and put those that are keepers in another inbox labeled as such. 

Again, it’s good to have the kids involved in this step.  If they are especially proud of an assignment, they can make sure it gets preserved.

Photograph the Keepers weekly

It’s impossible to keep every cute project the kids create, even if we deem every item a keeper, so every week, plan a quick five minute photographing session with your digital camera. 

Simply lay the work on the kitchen table and snap quick photos of each item.  Then, save only the one or two items that cannot be let go.  An under the bed storage container might be perfect for keeping scrapbooking items until you’re ready to use them.

Also, creating organized picture files on your computer for each child gives you an easier method for managing details if you scrapbook or for upload to a photo-sharing service.  

Once again, letting the kids help with the photographing is a great way to get them involved in being organized. 

 

Whether you use baskets or shoe boxes for sorting, get your kids involved and help yourself get control of the paper clutter, stay organized, and take back your kitchen table.

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