Getting Organized with a Kindergarten Notebook {plus how we do calendar time}

I am in love with using notebooks to organize our homeschool life. I use notebooks for everything. They are amazing!

I’ve shared with you my planning notebook and my prayer notebook already, and today I’m going to share with you the notebook I use to keep my kindergartener organized.

I’ve created a video to show you a live view of the notebook and to walk you through it. Sometimes it’s easier to see it flipped through before getting all the details. If you’re not interested in videos, then skip ahead and read the rest of the post!

{If you can’t see the video, click here: Homeschool Kindergarten Notebook}

Kindergarten Notebook Set-up

Sam’s kindergarten notebook includes the following sections: 

• Calendar
• Language Arts
• Math
• Copywork
• Social Studies

These are the main subject categories that we work through on a regular basis that require me to be organized. You can see our curriculum choices here.

I use these pocket dividers as the core of this organizational method along with a 1.5-inch binder.

I learned about how to use notebooks for homeschool organization from Kristi at Raising Clovers. It’s one of her five simple systems to organize your homeschool curriculum. She mentioned these pocket dividers and I instantly headed out to pick some up while school supplies were on sale!

Each week, I pull all of the worksheets and curriculum pages we’ll be using and put them in the corresponding pocket. Then when we sit down for school time, everything is right where we need it. Plus it gives Sam a visual of what’s coming and what’s left to be done for the week.

The pocket dividers are truly the best idea ever!

Kindergarten Calendar Notebook

I originally started the notebook just for calendar time, but eventually I saw the benefits of this method across all subjects, but here is how we do calendar time.

My goals for calendar time is introduce my kindergartener to the basic concept of a calendar, practice penmanship, and work on basic math skills. Our calendar time is constantly evolving, but I hope that by sharing our current notebook, you will gain some new ideas for your own little one.

Spanish Song

We start our time together singing our Spanish song, “Buenos Dias.” We sing it in both Spanish and English so he can learn what he’s saying. This is a great way to transition everyone into school time (I also have a two year old).

We sing it a little different, but this is the basic idea of the song.

I Can Write My Name

The first week of each month, we use this page to practice writing our name. We hope to see a lot of changes over time as he gets better and better in his penmanship throughout the year. Plus it makes a nice little keepsake.

This worksheet can be found at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Blank Calendar Pages

We use blank calendar pages for working on today’s date. You can use sheet protectors, but I’ve found that it erases, smudges, and doesn’t work as well. We prefer to use pencil for this part, so I just printed off several blank calendar pages and keep the extras in the back of the notebook. Plus we can review the previous months with a nice visual.

This worksheet can be found at 1+1+1=1 blog.

What is today’s date?

I couldn’t find a printable that was simplistic enough for what we needed. Sam learns best in small bite-size pieces of information.

Therefore, I pulled out a piece of lined paper and wrote questions that I wanted him to answer each day. I slipped it into a sheet protector, and we fill it in each day. I have him read each sentence, and I write the answers on the chalkboard for Sam to see. Then he copies my work.

I consider this stage one, and I expect this to change as he grows in his understanding of the concept. Right now this is a great time to work on reading skills, penmanship, and basic understanding of the date.

100 Days of School

Each day we do school in the school room, we color in one box. This is great for learning to count by 10’s right now. Eventually we’ll begin making patterns with our daily coloring. He also likes to tell me how many days are left before we reach another 10 bar which is great for basic math time. We plan to have a big party when we color in all the boxes!

This worksheet can be found at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Tally Marks

We also add a tally mark for each day that we do school. This is great practice for counting by 5’s as well as penmanship.

This worksheet can be found at Our Aussie Homeschool.

What is the weather today?

This is probably our favorite part of calendar time. We sing a simple song while we look out the window to determine the weather.

Then, he colors in the rectangle for the day’s weather. This is a great introduction to graphing.

What is the weather data collection?

At the end of each month, we collect our month’s data and ask questions like:

• Which type of weather did we experience most?
• Which type of weather did we experience least?
• Which month did we experience sunny weather the most?
• And so on!

This is a great time to talk about more or less, and we will usually pull out our wooden abacus to help us understand the concept.

The weather printables can be found at Our Aussie Homeschool.

Learning the seasons

Finally, we do one seasonal craft a month to learn the seasons. These will also be sweet keepsakes for us as he grows!

I hope to do a little more with seasons as we move further into the year as well as the weather, but this is what we’re starting with.

I expect little brother will eventually become more interested in what we’re doing, so we’ll keep taking it week by week. But for now, this is working REALLY well for us, and I could not be more pleased with the notebook as a whole.

We store it under his desk with a pencil box full of everything he needs to complete his notebook each day.

For the other subjects, we pull it out to grab our work for the day and then using a 3-ring hole punch we store it behind the dividers as we go. This keeps all of his work together and at the end of the year, I can decide what to keep and what to toss.

What about you? How do you keep your kindergartener organized? What about calendar time? I’d love to hear what you do in the comments!

If you want even more help getting your homeschool organized, I cannot recommend Kristi Clovers Ultimate Homeschool Organization eCourse enough! Click here to learn more.

This post contains my affiliate links. See my full disclosure policy here.

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