Paper clutter drives me crazy, which is probably why I eventually settled on a homeschooling philosophy that doesn’t require a lot of paper. We use worksheets and pre-fabricated lesson material as little as possible, but for those few subjects, a spiral binding machine is my best best friend.
I spiral bind all our math worksheets (for Saxon it’s only levels 1-3), copywork, and music theory. My favorite tip is: DON’T USE COVERS. There’s no front and no back, they just leave the book exactly as it is when they’re finished and the next day we flip to the next page.
For my Year 2 student, I used the Zaner Bloser handwriting page generator to print out large font selections from his school books with a blank lined page on the opposite side. During his 10 minutes of copywork each day he starts where he left off the day before and is able to write for 10 minutes without having to search for paper or a book or figure out where he is. It has made copywork much more enjoyable for us both.
I do the same thing for my Years 4 and 6 students only I do theirs in cursive with no blank handwriting paper, they copy straight into a notebook.
I reuse the coils over and over since I’m only binding a few things each year.
It’s super cost-effective and so streamlined and easy, it saves my sanity every single day!
