Kim Flyr is a parent and family life educator in Columbia, Maryland. She is a consultant to The Parenting Center and has published several essays about parenting, parent-teacher cooperation and helping young children transition into school. Each month, she brings us some quick tips on various aspects of parenting and family life.
If you’d like more on this month’s topic, you may be interested in our course “Helping Disorganized Kids Succeed in School.” You can find class meeting information on our courses page, or bring the class to your school or organization.
SCHOOL FORMS
As any parent of a school age child quickly discovers, schools love to send home paper! Some schools send home papers nightly, some send them home weekly, but you will get them. How do you know what to save, what to trash, what to do to stay organized? Experts have a few suggestions for you:
- Develop a system that works for your family. How will the papers get to you? Many families have a spot where the children need to put the papers for review each evening. If you have several children, you might need a folder system, where each child puts their papers in a folder with their name on it. This way, you can review the papers all at once.
- Decide how often you will look at the papers. Some parents feel better checking the notes nightly, some parents find once a week works for them. You shouldn’t let more than a week go by, as many notes (field trips, volunteer requests, etc.) are date sensitive.
- Develop a plan for reviewing homework nightly. Even responsible, strong students need their homework checked. This way you know what they are studying and can help them if they are struggling or even making careless errors. Homework is not yours to complete, but most teachers will expect you to check over it before it is returned.
- Only save a few pieces of your child’s work. Many parents like to hang up especially good work on a display board or the refrigerator for a while. That is a great idea, but after they’ve been up a few weeks, move them to the trash. The exception is for big projects that your child wants to hold onto or papers with sentimental value. It is a good idea to save a few papers or artwork from each year of your child’s schooling and store them in a special place. These become a priceless history of your child. But for all the other spelling quizzes, worksheets, etc., throw them away!
- Sort through other papers from the school. Yes, some of these papers should be saved. Keep a folder for each child and place important papers inside. Papers to keep include report cards and progress reports, field trip notes (to help you remember the date), notes about long-term projects, and newsletters from the school. Basically, this folder should hold anything you might want to refer back to. As for the rest, sort through it and throw it away quickly.
For more tips, check out the following sites:
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