Easy Peasy and Evernote

I had some requests to break down how I am using Evernote for arranging the kids’ Easy Peasy Lessons. I’ve never written a post like this before, but I’m willing to give it a whirl! Keep in mind this is my first time using Evernote, so I’m learning as I go, and if you know of a way to simplify anything I did, please leave a comment and let me know! I had to play around in the program for a while to get it to do what I wanted to, but I’m going to write this out as if I were going to do it all over again. I did this using Firefox, so I’m not sure if it would work the same way with other browsers.

You’re going to have to ignore the fact that I already have notebooks and notes in there, as I was not going to delete them all so you could see it from scratch. :o)

I wanted the kids to be able to access one day at a time. My older son is on the Autism spectrum, and gets overwhelmed easily. Additionally, I wanted to be sure they were clicking in the right spots. I also needed a setup that would allow me to reuse the “notes” each year, for the next child moving up. 

Creating a Notebook Stack:

The first thing to do is make sure on the left sidebar “Notebooks” is highlighted.

Then create two notebooks notebook called “Temp” and “1st Grade”. (go to File: New Notebook) I left them “synced” and I did not make them my default notebook. 

Click and drag the “1st Grade” notebook until the arrow is over the “Temp” notebook, then release the mouse button. This will create a “Notebook Stack” with both “Temp” and “1st Grade” in it.   

Right click on “Notebook Stack” and rename it to “Easy Peasy Lessons” or “Our School” or whatever you want. Then delete the “Temp” notebook, or change the name to another grade you need. This stack is where I put all of the grade’s lessons. When I add another grade, I select  that stack and then File: New Notebook, and it automatically places it in that stack. 

Adding the lessons: 

Select  the “1st Grade” notebook and click New Note.

TO MAKE THIS NEXT PART EASIER: I did this part two ways and I’m going to describe the first. I changed the sizes of my windows, so I had Evernote on one half of my screen, and the EP site on the other half. You can adjust the column widths in EN to make it fit and I also zoomed out of the EP window (hold down ctrl and spin my mouse button) so I could see at least one complete day at a time. It looked like this:  

 



On the EP site, go to the 1st grade lesson list. Highlight the Day 1 in lesson (including the Year links at the bottom of each lesson). Release the mouse button, then click on a part you highlighted and while holding down the mouse button,  drag it into the evernote window. 

When the cursor appears in the note, release the mouse button. 

It will paste into the note, automatically creating the title of the note as the first day. I found that as I added the days, the auto arranging put them out of order unless I added two zeros to 1-9, and one zero to 10-99. 

I found it easier to copy Days 1-99, then go back and add the zeros, but you can change them as you go too. (edit) Apparently Evernote does not have the ability to embed the videos, so you'll have to copy them and paste them into your browser to get to those. (end edit)

Click “New Note” and then highlight/drag Day 2 into the next note.

Click “New Note” and then highlight/drag Day 3 into the next note.

You get the idea…

After I had all of the lessons into notes, I created individual folders for each of them, using the same "Notebook Stack" method above. 

At the beginning of each week, I will move that week’s lessons into their folder, and the previous week’s lessons back to the grade folder. So all they have to do is check the wall chart to see what day they are on, go to their folder, and click away.

I didn’t put the Science/History lessons in each day, since the links take them right to the proper lessons, and that would be a ridiculous amount of extra work.

As for the printables: If the notes are in list view, you can easily see the asterisks next to the lessons that have printables. I plan to print out the whole year all at once, and put them in file folders for each child.

For the “Getting Ready” level for my daughter, I did her lessons a week/note, as they are shorter, and I’ll be doing those along with her.

I hope this helps! Let  me know if I missed anything!