How to Organize Learning Resources

There are so many amazing bundles floating around the homeschool community. Bundles are a wonderful way to get a lot of learning resources for not a lot of money. The current Nature Mega Bundle Vol 3 has over 1,800 pages! It is $600 worth of nature based learning resources for only $25. With topics from birds to plants, to animals and the sky, there are enough resources to last years of learning in your homeschool. But once you purchase something with that many resources what do you do with it all?

Save all files

First save all the files onto your computer. I like to save the files in topic folders like animals, birds, plants, etc. This will help you know what kinds of resources you have for each topic. So later when you’re studying a particular topic you can look in that folder and print what you want. 

Printing reccommendations

Personally I like printing at home. Of course printing at home is easier when you have a good printer that doesn’t suck out all the ink quickly! I highly recommend an Epson Eco Tank printer. I have the 2760. It uses ink bottles instead of cartridges. The amount of ink in the bottles equates to 80 regular ink cartridges! And the ink bottles are comparable in price to cartridges. I have had my printer for about 8 months and I’m finally to the halfway point of ink. And I’ve printed A LOT. Full curriculums, lots of colored paintings, and learning resources. 

What paper do you use?

I like to use card stock on resources we will use repeatedly. If it is a worksheet I will use regular printer paper. I use a 65lb weight white card stock. 

What do you use to cut the cards?

I use a paper cutter. It takes so much less time than trying to cut them with scissors. And it helps you keep a straight line. I have a guillotine paper cutter. It is very sharp! If you have little ones around I would recommend getting a paper trimmer with the blades hidden. 

How do you get the rounded corners?

I always wondered this myself when I would see resources with rounded corners. I came to find out there are corner rounders out there! They are little paper punches the you line up on the corner of papers and it rounds it off. They’re very inexpensive and so worth it! I like having rounded corners because it helps to keep the corners from bending after a lot of uses. 

Organizing printed resources

For full page printables I use a binder. I love this one from The Container Store. I keep everything in page protectors and separate it all by topic. I use these Post It tabs and a micron pen for labeling each topic. I have 2 binders now for all of our nature resources. These are the topics I have them separated into: Animals, Birds, Butterflies & Moths, Insects, Flowers, Seeds & Berries, Plants, Fungi, Trees, Pond, Ocean, Earth, Sky, and general Science.

What about cards?

For cards and other smaller resources I keep them in photo boxes also separated by the same topics. I have quite a few of these photo boxes from The Container Store. These particular boxes already come with card stock dividers to make it easy to separate topics. I keep each set of cards together using a rubber band. Having everything separated by topic makes it so easy to know what I have and much easier find things. 

I hope these tips have helped you not to feel as overwhelmed by all the amazing printable resources available! Please let me know if you have any questions!