As a full-time working mom with three children, August and September always means the beginning of the school year and what I will refer to as my "School Year Mountain." Every year I have to try to scale this mountain (aka all the paperwork that the school, PTO, and teachers send home). The hike up the mountain lasts the entire school year. I have to try my best not to get to high and fall off the cliff!
With one child, you start out wanting to save each and every paper he brings home with his own marks and crayon scribbles on them. As time progresses and you add more children to the mix though, the pile becomes much too large to retain every single sheet and project. You must then learn to sort through the pile that is sent home and decide what is essential, what is worthy of being kept for future memories, what might be needed to review at a later date.
This year I have taken a new approach that I'm trying to keep up with each week. I have found that it is too difficult to try to look through every paper during the week in depth since I must do this for three children after getting off of a full day of work and making and cleaning up after dinner. Instead, I scan through everything quickly. Homework of course goes back into the folder. I deal with any pages that need signatures or items returned (box tops, parts for class projects, and others). Everything else goes into a pile that will be dealt with on Sunday.
On Sunday while Dad watches the football games and shouts at the TV, I sit quietly next to him going through my foot-high pile of paper deciding what must stay and what must go. If I stay on top of this mountain and do this weekly, the keep pile stays at a very manageable height. I even decided to break it down further and create a folder for each child this year to make sure that I'm keeping samples from each or them but not keeping too much.
I tried a similar approach last year, but when I fell off of the cliff and did not keep up. Dad moved my mountain to the garage where I added to it and simply forgot about it until the end of the school year. You cannot imagine what a mountain had grown by June!
Despite the mountains though, I love spending times with the children and reviewing what they have learned. I love to see their unique approaches to the school work and how each has special subjects and talents that shine through.
I just hope I can keep up this year!
