A while back, I received this great idea from Rachel, a website user:
I thought you might be interested in something that I have begun to do for my 3 yr old daughter. She absolutely loves doing worksheets and begs for them on a daily basis – I have to talk her into letting me have the weekends off :-). Since printer ink could get rather expensive and the paper clutter was quickly building up, I have printed off some of the ones that you have linked to, as well as creating some of my own tracing worksheets, and put them in page protectors and in a 3-ring binder. She can now do the worksheets over and over again using a dry-erase marker on the page protectors (and I have it ready for her younger siblings when it’s their turn). I have been making my own tracing worksheets, putting the formation rhyme at the top (more for my sake than hers, because I was having trouble remembering them) and a page full of the letters or numbers printed in an outline font. For the numbers, I put corresponding counting worksheets in her notebook after the number.
This idea makes it very easy to have supplies ready and decreases the prep time needed. Love it!!! Thanks Rachel.
Here is an additional idea:
Using individual file folders, create a file for each letter of the alphabet and numbers 0-10. Place worksheets, sandpaper letters, pictures of items that start with that letter, and ideas that you find along with way. Pull out the specific letter and number for that week.
LOVE sheet protectors! LOL We go through REAMS of paper here, so this year I decided to do something different…I slipped graph paper into sheet protectors for the kids to work their math problems out on. They can easily erase and redo mistakes. (They do their TESTS on paper though for their portfolios.) Savings: 300 pieces of paper. I slipped sheet protectors over the pages of Handwriting Without Tears. Saving: 2 workbooks for later use. I slipped Spelling Power Daily test and practice sheets into a protector to be reused. Savings: a ream! It's definitely helped cut down on the amount of paper and ink we've use!
Jessy