KJ's Ladies: BJU Distance Learning Set-Up

We are a homeschooling family. We are just finishing our 3rd year of homeschooling. We are also just finishing our 1st year of distance learning with BJU and I wanted to share what worked for us and some of what I would do differently next year. I am also a photographer so I thought I would do it through pictures. Click on any picture and a bigger version will show up so you can see more detail.

First off... here is our school room only slightly picked up (remember it is the end of the school year so things are a bit raw)

Ok so there you have it... basic set-up, but here are the details... these two bookcases are the main hub of our school day

We will start with the one on the left

From top to bottom: we have the American flag, Christian flag and a bible flag that we say pledges to each morning. I found all of them on amazon. The next three shelves are full of videos, books and student pages in binders.

So I took each subject's student pages and put them in individual binders. The 4th grade were mostly 1/2 inch binders except reading which was a 1 inch binder. The 7th grade were each 1 inch binders. I labeled each of the spines with my label machine.

The bottom two shelves of both cabinets house our science supplies. These are not included in the distance learning kit and are optional, but it is something we have chosen to invest in. We feel that science is hands-on so while they may see the experiment on the video there are also many times we do the experiment here at home as well. So we made an investment to purchase the BJU science kits from homesciencetools.com Most of the time these shelves are closed and locked for safety purposes.

Just in case you forgot here is the bookcase on the right

From top to bottom: All of the book links, and read-a-louds for the year go on the top. We pull them out as we need/read them. The top shelf is full of teacher's editions for all three grades. Now, this is an investment that I highly recommend, PRINTED TEACHER'S EDITIONS. The printed version does not come with the distance learning packet; but the digital version are available to you in your digital BJU account and you can view/print them as part of your distance learning packet. But, you can order the printed versions for an additional $100/grade. I love having them and use them all the time to correct papers, pull out and occasionally teach a lesson rather than play a video, and to review what is being taught each lesson. I find them well worth the extra $100! The second shelf is where all my parent's pages are located in 2 inch binders. I color-code all my children; (and interestingly it has become their favorite color.) Blue is my 7th grader, Purple is my 4th grader, and Pink is my 2nd grader. (you will not see pink parent pages on these shelves as I did not do DL for my 2nd grader... I taught all her subjects, next year she will do DL) Here is a close up of the parent's binder:

I can fit about 3 subjects in the binder and I separate the subjects with a page dividers. I need two 2-inch binders for each grade. I also keep the test key with each subject in here. I will explain how I use them in a bit.

Also on my second shelf nestled right between my parent binders and my loose leaf paper are three accordion files (blue, purple and pink of course) and these hold each of my kid's tests. Here is a close up:

Now, I will be honest, I didn't like keeping the tests separate and I don't think I will do this again next year. Too many times when we were out and about doing school my kiddos had a test and I forgot this piece. I think I may hole punch them and put in with my parent pages binder next year.

The bottom shelf of this bookcase is all the extras we have around, math manipulatives. (We do not use BJU for math, we find that Math-U-See works better for us math challenged folk) We also have flashcards, dictionaries, and any other odd item we might use for the moment. Again the bottom is more science tools and closed and locked most of the time.

Ok so that is how the room is set up. Here is how my binders look. Let's start on the student side.

Each of my kids have an agenda. (got them here on amazon) Each week I write the BJU day they need to complete in each subject that day. As they complete it they cross it off or they highlight it. (as you can see they also like to doodle in the agenda). As a side note... here is another good place for personalized/cute agendas for students.

So they pick a subject and pull out that subject's binder on their shelf. Turn to the correct day and it it will tell them the video to watch and the homework required of them for that day. They then place their completed work in a bin for me to correct.

Now we move to the parent's side. This is my parent's pages binder/lesson planner.

here is how I use it: I write the date that the lesson should be done. (lesson planning- I usually do a quarter at a time) I scratch out anything I don't think is necessary (this happens to be a week we will do all the work, sometimes there are a lot of scratch marks) I highlight the parent responsibility once I have graded my kid's papers. (usually once a week) I also put a little sticky post-it on the spot I left off so that I can quickly find my place.

Now here is my grading/attendance/reports binder which I think I will do very differently next year. But let's look anyway

Here is a look inside, but the disclaimer is: I am in upstate NY and NY requires ALOT of record keeping and reports. So you may not need all this, but unfortunately I do.

So to start with I keep an attendance record. I have to prove I schooled 180 days. The "H" stands for a holiday and cannot be counted in my total school days. The "A" is for absence and can be counted in my total school days as long as at least one child is doing school. The checks are for the days they attended a school day. I total the month in the first column and the second is the YTD total. The black number on the side is the YTD total school days offered. Again I color-coded each child. So for example by the end of the month my 7th grader will have had 3 absences out of 176 days of school. (Each of my kids missed various school days due to a nasty virus that went through our house in March... but I digress). In our state each kid can miss up to 1/3 of a total school year without remediation. I got this attendance record at Donna Young.

Next is my school calendar. Red x's are days we will not do school, green squares are known days that we will do school away from home, black circles are days reports are due to the school district, and blue circles are testing days. I also numbered the weeks and totaled the days. (told you I was obsessed with color coding)

Next in my book are the grades, all DL subjects come with these printed grade sheets:

As you can see as the year went on I marked them up pretty good and drew lots of stuff on them. The red lines across the page are quarter markers btw.

I used sticky tabs to mark each subject. And a different color for each kid. I moved them to the place I left off for each subject. These tabs don't match my exact color coding formula... but they don't make sticky tabs in the right colors so I must be flexible. :)

Now why I will change this binder next year... about half way through the year I realized that BJU provides an excel spreadsheet for each DL subject that I can download from my BJU digital account. I will probably keep the grades on these spread sheets verse writing and figuring grades by hand next year. So all that is left in the notebook is a single sheet attendance sheet and a single sheet calendar. I think will move those the parent page's binder next year and hopefully eliminate a binder.

Well that is about it, but before you go... my hubby said I should show you this...

my science chemical storage

When we purchased the science kits there were a few chemicals we purchased and I didn't just want to throw them on the shelf. So I went to Walmart and purchased these small locking rubbermaid storage. I have three in my science cabinet. White for corrosive substances. Red for flammable substances. And blue for general storage. Which is commonly used in science circles.

I used colored electrical tape to label each rubber maid container with what substances where in the container.

I then cut cardboard to fit inside the rubbermaid and circles to fit each substance so they would not tip over and spill. If I could; I labeled the top of the bottles too.