Raising Kids of Character With Grace and Peace

Mar. 9, 2007

The Infamous Lesson Planner

Trying to find a solution to the age-old question of how I'm going to record my kids' homeschooling experience. I love the idea of a "notebook" for each thing learned. Lapbooking is cool, too. But I need something more structured right now. Having a large family makes lesson planning ... well, ... eww, but I think I've tackled the problem. Back to basics. When in doubt, simplify.

I tried Homeschool Tracker. I even bought the PLUS version thinking I was missing some cool stuff. And it's a GREAT program, but I just don't want to be tied to the PC. That sounds weird coming from me - nerd princess, but it's true. I went back to the old 3-ring binder thing I had going before, but this time it looks alot like those generic Teacher Plan Books you can get at Office Max or something. I find I just want the space to put what I want them to accomplish and check it off when it's done. Period. I was writing their assignments on a large dry erase board, but there was no permanent record. So, I'm putting it all together tonite. It's gotta get us through this second "term".

I'm also relaxing the schedule a little. Instead of trying to schedule every half hour of the day and figure out who I should be working with when, I'm gonna set aside homeschooling hours and they can do their work in any order they want. Then if I need to work with someone on something and any others are interrupting with requests for help, I can tell them to move on to another subject or assignment. I mean, let's face it, you may schedule 2 year olds to color with big brother, but after 5 minutes they're saying, "I'm done" and breaking the crayons!

We found we were having to adjust the schedule too much because of different life events and seasonal interruptions. We had an evangelist in with late nights and sleeping in - so there went math for a week. Not really a big deal, but things like this happen all the time.

I still like A-Squared. I spice it up a little with some other stuff like Math-It and Winston Grammar. I'm just gearing up for the end of the school year so that I can say such and such was a goal, we accomplished that goal, onto the next (goal/grade). Anybody else feeling that push?