Monthly Calendar and Managing School Clutter

We've been creating these large calendar pages for about a year and it has helped our crazy unorganized family so much! Cora was asking about dates and when certain events were happening and which days she had school, so I started making these monthly calendars to simplify things a bit.

I have a big roll of white paper (we have this one) that I cut a piece from each month. I quickly sketch out the grid and fill in the dates. Right now, I use a mixture of symbols and words so that she can quickly know what is happening each day (ie. balloon for birthday parties, etc). As Cora gets older and gets better with reading, I switch over from symbols to words. Cora helps color in and draw faces on different days... always a smiling face for school days.

Thanks to school, there is a huge influx of papers. I immediately take any papers with important dates or information and input it into my own planner. When art is sent home, we tape it up around the calendar so we can enjoy it for the remainder of the month. We also put up Cora's favorite drawings that she draws at home. When the month ends, I take a picture and we take everything down. If there is art that we love, we'll save it... everything else is thrown away. Just a couple simple steps that keeps our school clutter to a minimum and keeps the kids from asking me the same questions over and over.