🐺 PDF curriculum and how we make it work

 Hi everyone,

  Here is some tips and tricks to making PDFs work for us as a homeschooling family. 

Why? 

Originally I started using PDFs for the ability to be able to use it for all of my children without having to repurchase it over and over through the years. That was way back when I only had one school aged child, one toddler, and was pregnant with baby #3, you know trying to think ahead, right. 

That was before I fully understood just how different every one learns, how different every one is with doing worksheets/book work. Now I not only buy PDF in hopes to save money but also so each child can learn in a style that works best for them. For example if my 6 year old messes up she wants to start fresh with a new page, but my 9 year old could care less about crossing things out and writing on top until you have no idea what he is trying to write or if he really even did. One of my children is fine if you give her a 300 page workbook and thinks nothing of it. Where my other daughter would have a panic attack at the idea of a 300 page workbook. So i print her stuff in small groups of 30 to 50 pages. So needless to say having the ability to re print something has been amazing. 

Just yesterday, I was printing a new unit for us to do together and my oldest asked if I was going to print one for myself to do also? Sure, why not. I don't normally do my own. So there I stayed printing 5 Reptile and Amphibian Journals by Funschooling Thinking Tree and one copy of each level and the teacher guide to The Good and The Beautiful Reptile and Amphibian Unit to pair together nicely. All kids do family group units together even the 3 year old. I feel like it promotes learning from the start and it always amazes me what they pick up ( but thats another post for another time).

File Storage?

Lots of different homeschool curriculum companies offer PDF options on some, most, or all of their products. I use to struggle to keep all of my files organized on my laptop mostly due to lack of storage space. So i started moving files over to thumb drives. That was a mess. I was starting to feel like maybe PDFs were going to be a huge challenge. Then Google Drive came along, it has been my saving grace. 

How I organize my homeschool drive.

Fist I create folders for each curriculum or resource

Second I create folders inside the main folder to help organize mostly by subjects. 

Binding 

I have tried out several ways to print and bind journals and units in hopes that the kids keep the pages in order. 

I tried printing the pages and separating them into days and passing them out. This worked ok. However it was a lot of work keeping track of all the loose pages, and who's was who's. At the end of the day I felt like this made more work for myself. 

I tried 3 ring binders. This could have worked maybe if my children were older. For us this ended up with a lot of pinched fingers, dropped folders that popped open causing all the pages to fall out, and millions of torn out pages. Once again I felt like I was making more work for myself. 

I tried the tacky glue book binding. This did work and if you used enough glue that pages did not fall out. This method worked and I liked color coordinating the binding for each child making is very easy to tell who's journal was who's. However, this method was very time intensive for me apply layer after layer of tack glue to the binding edge of the books and keeping pressure.  With 4 kids and doing journals myself this was not a do able option.  

Next a friend bought a binder I don't remember the brand and she invited all of us moms to print journals or units and come over dink coffee and bind journals. We no joke we binded 100s of journal/units and chatted all day while the kids ran wild. This was fun. This showed me what I wanted. Yes, she said we could come over and bind whenever we wanted but this was also not practical. 

Then I was gifted a wonderful Fellow binding machine. I have loved this things so much. I bind books that are slowly falling about, coloring books, flyers and maps for traveling, and of course lots and lots of journals and units. Homeschooling moms always love gifts that make their daily lives easier.  

Benefits  

One of the biggest for me is how affordable Google Drive is. How great it has been at keeping me organized and how easy it is to use the search to find something quick. The fact that I can get access to all of my files any where that has internet or cell service as the Google Drive App is awesome also has been a game changer for us when traveling. 

The ability to print and give a 3 year old a journal so he feels part of the group, the family, and is learning right along with us. The ability for myself to have a journal.  The ability to reprint pages. The ability for a child to redo a journal at a older and more advanced age has been a unforseen benefit to us.

Struggles

Not everything loads with an image of the cover. This is only as big of a issue as it is because I have one child who has to see the cover of the journal when choosing one. Once I start pulling up covers for her 2 other kids are asking to see cover photos also, then I am either download the file to show it to them or going on that companies website to show them. This causes its own problem because then they always see another journal or unit they want. 

My solution to this issue has been to print the cover of every journal/ unit we have put it in a screen protector and add them to a 3 inch 3 ring binder. So my visual learners can just as easily choose something. I also write how many pages are in each journal so I have an idea of what we need to print and bind. 

I hope this post can help some of you with you PDF questions. 

NB 🐺