Organizing A Year of Playing Skillfully Supplies

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One of the very best decisions we made about our first homeschool preschool year was to use A Year of Playing Skillfully curriculum (*not affiliated*). Last week, I posted an honest, in-depth review of the curriculum, but today I’m going to talk about organizing our A Year of Playing Skillfully supplies.

A Year of Playing Skillfully is an amazing, beautiful curriculum that encourages wonder, discovery, and exploration. It’s comprehensive and well-organized into months and skills. One things I found when I first received it, though, was that it does take some good organizational skills to ensure a smooth-flowing year of implementation. No doubt there are endless ways you could organize and store your curriculum and supplies, but this is how I organize ours!

Organizing A Year of Playing Skillfully Supplies

AYOPS Curriculum Binder

A Year of Playing Skillfully curriculum binder

The physical curriculum comes 3-hole punched and ready to put in a binder. I store the entire, year-long curriculum in a large, 3-inch binder on our homeschool shelf for easy access.

Inside the front cover pocket, I store all of my laminated Scripture printable that correlate with each month of the curriculum (these can be printed from the AYOPS Facebook group you can join after you purchase the curriculum).

Inside the back cover pocket, I store all of the monthly checklists that come with the curriculum. I laminated each checklist so that I can use wet-erase markers to keep track of what we’ve completed each month.

I hang the checklist and the Scripture printable on our homeschool wall (see below) so that we can easily reference what we’re working on monthly (and weekly).

Monthly AYOPS Binder

Organizing A Year of Playing Skillfully supplies and curriculum

The entire curriculum binder is large and heavy, so I have a smaller, 1.5-inch binder that I use only for the current month of the curriculum. When we get toward the end of each month, I switch out to the next month and put it in the smaller binder. I place the pages in page protectors, because I carry this binder outside, into the kitchen, etc. as we complete activities, and I don’t want the gorgeous, colorful pages to get ruined!

Storage Tote for All AYOPS Supplies

Organizing A Year of Playing Skillfully supplies into large storage tote

I purchased a large storage tote in which to store all of the AYOPS supplies for the year. Originally, I had planned to buy a smaller tote to use for the current month’s supplies, but I found that it was unnecessary. Our large tote is easily accessible, so each day I just grab what I need from it.

Basket for Smaller Supplies

I keep a small wire basket on a shelf in the dining room for smaller supplies we are either using that month or that we use often. This is where I keep alphabet cards, catechism and character cards, dehydrated water beads, and other supplies. In the fall, I had a bag with figurines for the life cycle of a frog. In the winter, I had small, plastic arctic animals and fake snow. We almost always have a large ziplock of homemade play dough, too.

This basket has been a lifesaver. I always know where certain supplies are, and it’s just a few steps away from the dining room table, where a lot of our schooling takes place.

Plastic Envelopes for Printables

AYOPS comes with some printables to be used throughout the year, but it also recommends several types of printable cards, etc. Back in September, I found and printed cards for the life cycle of frogs, and later in the fall I printed cards for the life cycle of apple trees. I have also found other printables throughout the year to complement the activities and themes we are working on.

I found these plastic envelopes on Amazon, and they are perfect to store these printables! I label each envelope so I know when to pull it out, and I usually keep it on my shelf alongside my AYOPS binder.

Homeschool Wall

At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t exactly sure how to display what we were working on. I wanted the monthly verse to be displayed somewhere central so we could read it often and work together on memorizing it. I also wanted the monthly checklist to be easily accessible so I could keep track of the activities we’d completed. At first, I just hung them side-by-side in the dining room where we complete most of our schooling.

However, in late Fall, an idea struck me. I have this large roll of kraft paper that I had previously used to display quotes and Scriptures. I pulled it out and set to work creating a background on which to hang our verses, checklists, artwork, and weekly focus cards. It hangs in our dining room and serves as our central, what-we’re-working-on wall! (The alphabet, catechism, and character trait cards can be found at Life, Abundantly.)

Daily Planner

I LOVE my Day Designer! It has an entire page for each day, so it gives me plenty of space to make notes, lists, and plans. I keep track of my online students, the activities I want us to do from AYOPS, appointments, grocery lists, etc.

This planner has been incredibly helpful for planning and organizing our AYOPS activities, too. I make a list of 10-12 activities I’d like to do each week, then make a supply list of any supplies I’ll need to buy for that week. Each day, I write our Top 3, and we do what we can!