Dumpster or Backpack? You Decide.

Do you feel like this when you need something in your pack?

Mizz C. knows you're busy. So she’ll make it quick and easy: 

• Get a wastebasket and a recycling bin if you have one.

• Dump out everything from your backpack onto a desk or table.

• Put school books in one section of your backpack.

• Put your notebooks in another section. It's like keeping your peas separate from your mashed potatoes.

• Hunt down all loose pieces of paper. Pile 'em up. 

• Put like with like--math homework with math tests, science homework with science tests, and so on. Find a place in your room—a shelf, a cubby, a box. Put those old tests and homework papers away.* Use them as test tools later on. Hold the bonfire until the end of the school year when all your tests are over!

• Toss or recycle outdated papers, worn-out pens, markers,  pencils, peanut shells, and wrappers of things you ate or chewed in September.

• Add fresh writing tools and paper but not too much.

• Done! Now go find a skateboard.

*Someday when you fall in love with folders the way Mizz C. did many blog postings ago, you can stuff your old corrected quizzes and homework in those.

 

Son of Finders Keepers

Do you have one of these folders, Middle Schoolers? 

It's a traveling folder to carry important papers your parent needs to see, sign, pay for, or write on a family calendar. Mizz C. wishes she could send you one right through your computer so you can keep track of medical forms, permission slips, class trip checks, and school announcements.  Design one for yourself. Then stick it in your backpack so you never miss out on:   

               . . . or a trip to the natural history museum:  

                      . . . or Mizz C's favorite kind of class trip: 

Go! Have a good time! 

Finders Keepers

Mizz C’s pop quiz for today:

Q: How many minutes do you think most people spend looking for lost things every day, Middle Schoolers?

A: If you said, 16 minutes, you get an A+. Sez who? Sez James Gleick in his book, Faster. Would you like your 16 minutes back? Here’s how:

• Get rid of stuff you don’t use anymore. Less stuff=less to lose.

• Put things you really, really need in the same place every time.

• Line up school clothes where you can hop into them without opening your eyes in the morning. 

• Ditto sports gear, musical instruments, and other equipment you need at school the next day.

• Always check under and around bus and car seats when you leave a vehicle.

• Label your stuff.

• Check your school planner to see if you've packed the stuff you need the next day.

Warning: You may now leave this blog posting before Mizz C blabs on about her true lost and found story:

Once upon a time, while she was hiking, Mizz C. bent down to look at moss patterns on a rock or tie her boot--it doesn't matter which. Because she didn't close the zipper on her hiking jacket, EVEN THOUGH SHE KNEW BETTER!!!! her house keys fell out, unbeknownst to her. 


So Mizz C. went home, happy and smiling after her day in the woods until she discovered she had no keys. She immediately went into one of her little panic modes, tried to retrace her many steps, searching way, way longer than 16 minutes, but still NO KEYS!!! With a heavy heart, she broke into her own house. "Boo hoo," cried Mizz C. because those lost keys were attached to a pretty piece of jewelry she liked. Now that was lost forever, too.

Fast forward to six months later. A fat little envelope arrived from a supermarket. Inside were her lost keys! Some nice hiker had found Mizz C's keys, saw the supermarket tag, went to the store, the store traced the bar code back to Mizz C, and mailed them to her. 


Thank you nice hiker whose name she doesn't know. Thank you Stop & Shop. Henceforth Mizz C. put her keys into the SAME right-hand zippered pocket EVERY TIME just like she's telling all you middle schoolers to do right now!  

Now if she could only find her old Leki hiking poles. She knows they're up there somewhere in the Hudson Highlands! If only she'd thought ahead and put a supermarket tag on them. Lesson learned.

Tame Your Paper Monsters

Mizz C. found this mashed-up test on the ground while walking near a local school. "How sad," Mizz C. thought as she picked up the corrected test in a failed attempt to save its life. 

Perhaps the student who dropped it had never had a chance to read Mizz C’s A+ Guide to Great Grades. Or maybe the wet, muddy ground was this student's filing system instead of a beautiful accordion folder like this.

XO Beautiful accordion folder

MIZZ C. LOVES, LOVES, LOVES  accordion folders. She wants to marry one, but she’s already married. She wants to live in a stationery store but already lives in a house. She’s all about filing recipes, bills, letters, receipts, and clippings.

Why just last month Mizz C. needed to find the receipt for her food processor, which shouldn’t have broken in the middle of grating three kinds of cheeses. But she had the store receipt in her “Household Appliances” accordion folder, of course! So when she called the company and read the receipt information to them, guess what? They sent her a new food processor for free!

                                                    Here it is: 

(The heirloom tomato is a hand-painted birthday card from her dear cousin Elizabeth, who suggested that Mizz C. was once a hot tomato but is now an heirloom tomato. So true.) 

"So what's your point, Mizz C?" you middle schoolers are probably wondering? "Are you about to share a tomato recipe? We thought this was a study skills blog, not a food blog." Mizz C's roundabout point is this great study tip: save and file away your school work until the end of the school year. After that, on the last day of school, you have Mizz C's permission to create a fleet of paper airplanes from all your work, after which you'll put them in the closest recycling bin sorted by subject like the organized A+ students Mizz C. knows you are. 


Your old corrected homework, tests, and teacher handouts are like Mizz C’s receipts. Keep them in a file or accordion folder at home even if they have ketchup on them, jam prints,  or a grade you'd rather forget. They’re the best study tools ever for future tests. Handouts clue you in to what your teacher will probably put on a test. Corrected tests and homework show what you're strong in and what needs work. So give your handouts, old tests, and homework a good home:

Oh! Oh! One more thing before the blogger authorities shut down Mizz C. for blabbing too much. Write your name and the date on all your handouts, tests, and homework assignments in case they lose you. That way if Mizz C. finds one of your important class papers on her daily walks, she can track you down.