Teaching My Kids School Paper and Assignment Organization

This fall my children are taking more courses taught by teachers than ever before. These teachers are either private tutors hired who teach groups of homeschooled kids in a building we rent with classrooms or they are homeschool co-op's with homeschooling parents teaching.

This means my kids are jugging books, textbooks, handouts, homework papers, school supplies (protractor, calculator, pencils), folders, three ring binders, and spiral notebooks.

I tried organizing them at the start but they were resistant. I half-way prepared them.  By that I mean for the classes which the teachers communicated directly to me that various supplies were required, I forced my kids to have them ready. For the rest it was more up to my kids to organize.

How that worked out was that their stuff started getting lost, sometimes whole books went missing or sometimes one important handout paper was gone. Other times they did homework in writing but when it came time to hand it in they didn't know where it was, which I found really frustrating! Also we all started to realize that certain classes had more papers than we'd anticipated and they started showing up on places like on the kitchen table, on the hallway floor or on the floor of the car.

I shifted to require that each child have a folder for each class, even if they would never use it. Some classes wound up needing three ring binders. The kids resisted this but I forced it on them.

I then had to teach them how to organize their stuff which is quite surprising to me. I don't know why I thought this should be intuitive. I don't remember in school being taught how to put papers in a folder or to arrange the papers chronologically in the three ring binder. However maybe my teachers did harp on us about this and I've blocked it out of my memory. My parents were hands-off with my public school education and they never looked at my school papers or how to file them.
Also with three different co-ops to attend we wound up having a separate bag for each child (and me) for each day. We were making a mess by unpacking and repacking one backpack each day. Things were getting left behind at home by mistake in the packing and unpacking process. (Each kid has 10-12 different subject classes a week.)

My ten year old son is now protesting the loudest. We had a conversation about the fact that he had his bag all packed and I said to get in the car to go. The kids went out ahead of me and I didn't watch their every move. When we arrived I asked where the bag was, and he said he left the bag at home as it had stuff he didn't need. I said he needed paper to write on, and a pencil. He retorted the the teacher always hands out paper and pencil. I explained she probably does that for the kids who failed to bring it to class. I mentioned this to her and she agreed that is her back-up plan for kids who come unprepared, like mine was. Ouch.

We are also having some miscommunication about homework that is being assigned. My kids tell me they have no homework and later I find out there was homework that my kids did not do. I find out about this usually if I inquire directly.

As of this week I am forcing my kids to take their student planner calendars to co-op with them and to write it in the book. This issue is also confused by the fact that some teachers email the homework to the co-op email distribution list so I see it and others choose not to do that. Some teachers refuse to tell the parent there is homework but I'm used to telling my students via email plus in person since that was the rule for the co-op that I am teaching four classes at. I assumed it was the same with other co-ops but I was wrong.

Well it feels odd switching our homeschooling to look more like school and to have to actually teach my kids how to organize their papers but that's what we're spending time on lately. No less than thirty minutes went to one child and an hour to the other two days ago.

Well they'll learn with practice over time I hope.