Free Resources for a Comprehensive Homeschool Mom Binder

There's a particular kind of chaos that comes with homeschooling — library due dates tangled up with grade records, a grocery list scrawled on the back of a spelling test, your family vision statement filed away somewhere you can never find it when you need it most. If you've ever stood in the middle of your kitchen holding three different notebooks and wondering where anything actually lives, you're not alone.

A mom binder solves this. It's not about being a perfectly organized homeschool mom (that mom doesn't exist). It's about giving every part of your homeschool life — the practical and the spiritual, the daily and the yearly — one home to live in, so you can spend less time hunting for papers and more time present with your children.

Here's how I build mine, section by section.

Vision

This is the section that dictates what I do in every other area of our home and homeschool. Before you plan a single subject, it helps to know why you're homeschooling and what kind of family culture you're building.

Include these resource in your vision section;

• Free Family Vision Worksheet walks you through naming your family's essentials
• Homeschool Mission Statement you can revisit whenever a hard day tempts you to forget why you started. 
• Flourishing Year Workbook includes helpful pages for creating a peaceful homeschool (free inside Restoration Home Community)
• The Peaceful Press printable planner includes a vision brainstorming sheet as well as yearly goal planning sheets for each student.
• A Vision Board can help you brainstorm words and pictures that make you feel excited about your home and family.
• Family Rule of Life- In my book, Habits for a Sacred Home I helped families create a rule of life that guides their values and habits and this is also included in my mom binder.

 

Some of these resources will be in my mom binder, but I might also keep a few posted on the back of my bedroom door, inside our homeschool cupboard, or on a clipboard or the outside of my mom binder so I can readily refer to them.

 

Habits and Rhythm

Habits are the quiet architecture of a peaceful home. This section holds whatever habit tracker you're currently using, along with a short list of the one or two habits you're actively building with your children this season — not a dozen, just one or two done well.

• The Peaceful Press Planner includes a built-in habit tracker along with a year at a glance so you can plan out the big moments of the year.
• If you want ongoing accountability and a weekly lesson to walk you through it, our Restoration Home Community habit challenge sends a new habit-building lesson to your inbox every Friday, with prizes along the way for moms who stick with it.
• Our free rhythm and routine checklist includes templates for building a daily and weekly rhythm that works for your family.

Cleaning

A simple cleaning section keeps your home running in the background of your homeschool day rather than competing with it.

• The Chore and Routine Pack is a simple place to start, giving your children age-appropriate visual routines so cleaning becomes a shared family rhythm instead of a mom-only job.
• The Life Skills checklist, included in the Chore and Routine Pack can help you track where you and your children are in your practical life skills acquisition.
• Peaceful Press homeschool curriculum includes practical life skills so you and your children can learn motor skills and home care throughout your homeschool year.
• The Inspired Homeschool includes a chapter on the home atmosphere inspired by the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Shopping

A running list for curriculum supplies, library holds, art materials, and the weekly grocery run saves you from the "I'll remember it" trap (you won't).

• The Peaceful Press Planner includes a wish list and meal-planning pages that pair well here, so your shopping list and your meal plan live side by side.
• Blank lined paper to jot down items you need so you don't pick up your phone for impulse purchases while you are in the middle of homeschooling.
• Access our Amazon store front for more homeschool supply ideas here

Curriculum Plans

This is your map for the year, and keeping these forms organized in your binder can help you stay on track for the year.

• Scope and sequence with subjects and resources you are using for each child
• A loop schedule for beauty subjects
• Daily lesson plans, the Peaceful Press curriculum includes a helpful week at a glance so you can check off what you do instead of having to write out each weeks lessons.

Our curriculum quiz and free curriculum samples are a low-pressure way to try a few options before committing to a full year.

Shop the Peaceful Press Homeschool

Memory Work

Set aside a page for the scripture, poems, and passages your family is memorizing together this term.

• Poetry- We send a poem each week this year in the Restoration Home Community, you can buy a full collection of the poetry here.
• Bible Verses- Download our free Nature Bible verse cards that correspond with Nourishing Nature Kindergarten.
• States and Capitals- We have templates for this in Playful Pioneers
• English Grammar- Nourishing Nature Kindergarten includes a handy phonics chart and IEW includes wonderful grammar learning resources.
• Foreign Language- Include word lists, verbs, and other language helps

Bible Study

Whether you follow a family devotional, work through a book of the Bible together, or simply keep a running list of verses that have spoken to you this season, give this its own tab. Faith woven into the ordinary rhythms of the day is at the heart of everything we do at The Peaceful Press, and a dedicated Bible study section keeps it from getting crowded out by the academic side of your binder.

You can use the Restoration Home Daily Journal to track your prayers and personal verses that you want to remember.

Portfolio

Many states ask for a portfolio, and even if yours doesn't, it's a lovely thing to build anyway. Keep a simple folder of your children's best work from each term — a piece of writing, a narration, a piece of art, a photo of a nature study or project. You don't need to save everything, just enough to tell the story of the year.

In my mom binder I kept a tab for each child with their individual scope and sequence, sample work, books read, and grades.

Grades

If you're tracking grades — for a co-op, a transcript, or your own records — the Peaceful Press Planner includes a grade and test log designed to make this painless, so you're not reconstructing a semester's worth of assignments from memory in May.

Book List

Keep a running record of everything you read aloud together and everything your children read independently — it becomes a treasured keepsake as much as a record. Our free Master Book List is full of favorites Jennifer read aloud to her own children over the years with the Peaceful Press and it's a lovely starting point if you're building your own list from scratch.

Field Trips

A simple log of where you went, what you learned, and any tickets or notes worth keeping turns field trips into a record you can look back on for years. The Peaceful Press Planner includes a field trip planner page that makes this easy to keep up with all year long.

Journal / Prayer Journal

In my mom binder I also kept blank paper for recording what my children were learning and what I was observing in our homeschool. This helped me create thoughtful plans for future homeschool years.

We also offer a few other helpful journals.

Restoration Home Journal of Personal Reflections offers 52 questions to help you notice where your home needs more peace. These are questions that we have worked through in the Restoration Home Community.

The Restoration Home Daily Journal offers daily prompts for personal growth and better habits. A few minutes with a journal page can be the difference between a week that feels like survival and one that feels like it had purpose.

Restoration Home Conversation Journal includes 52 questions to ask your children so you can record important thoughts and moments in your life together.

Putting It All Together

You don't need a Pinterest-perfect binder to make this work. A simple three-ring binder, some tab dividers and labels (download a free pdf here), and a handful of the free and paid Peaceful Press resources above will get you further than you'd think.

Start with just two or three sections that solve your biggest headache right now — for most moms, that's vision and habits — and build the rest as you need it.

If you'd like extra support putting your binder into practice, from the accountability of weekly habit lessons to a monthly book club, the Restoration Home Community was built for exactly this season of homeschool life. We only open enrollment four times a year, so if you've been waiting for a sign to get organized and supported, this might be it.

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