The first step in the process is to look at the web site and figure out how many lessons per week I will be doing for each subject.  For Level 1B, for example, that would be the following:

• New Testiment  x2
• Saints  x1
• Catechism  x1
• Mathematics  x5
• Learning to Read  x5
• Handwriting  x5
• Copywork  x5
• Tales  x1
• Fables  x1
• Poetry  x1
• US History  x1; Catholic US History sporadically
• Family Geography (terms 1 & 2)/Earth Studies (term 3)  x2
• Map work  x1 (I keep a list and then find all the places once a week)
• Nature Walk  x1
• Nature Reading  x1
• Music Appreciation  x1
• Picture Study  x1
• Art  x2

Next, I collect all my books that I will be using with these subjects and break down the reading accordingly.  Some are easy, like the Religious Education books.  We read one chapter or saint for each lesson.  Others, like History, I look at to break up large chapters and combine short ones so that I stay on the MA schedule without getting surprised by a 15 page reading.  Lastly, I go through the books that require me to break them up into lesson-sized readings, like Tales, Nature Reading, or Art Studies.  All of this gets laid out in an Excel spreadsheet, though you can use a Word document, a paper spreadsheet, or write them directly into your lesson planner when you complete the next step.

Also, I look over the subjects and decide which ones a child can work on independently and which ones will require me to work closely with him.  This is an important step to scheduling as you will see below.

Finally, to create our actual weekly schedule, I break up the morning into 20 minute time slots, from 8:00 until 12:00.  I do this by making a table in Word, though you can also use a spreadsheet.  Next, I fill in which subject will be taught in each time slot.  To do this, I have several considerations.

• Decide which subjects will take place in the afternoon.  A few, like Nature Walks and Art are things that may regularly take longer than 40 minutes (especially if you’re out in the cold or you have a special art project planned.)
• Will a lesson regularly take more than 20 minutes?  Geography/Earth Studies, Art, or Math, depending on your approach, often require set up and clean up times; other subjects may be trouble areas for a child and so I will want more time to work with him.  I give these lessons double slots (40 minutes.)
• I try to combine lessons as much as possible.  Because the Religious Education readings are short, we all do them together.  Tales, Poetry, Map work, Art, Nature Walks can all be combined lessons, too, depending on your choice of materials.
• I look very carefully to make sure I schedule something that requires my complete attention for only one child!  This is my biggest challenge.  I can’t be reading Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt with ds#1 at the same time I am reading Aesop’s Fables with ds#2!  Breaking the subjects into ones children can work on independently and ones that require my attention is very helpful here.

Once I have figured those four things out, and I place the subjects into each slot on my schedule, I can easily create weekly lesson schedules.  I actually print one for each child every week with little check of boxes (that’s why I use Word instead of Excel for this) so they can see what lesson they need to do next.

What is nice about creating your own lesson plans is you can easily adapt it to your own needs.  I added in some things, took out others, and used different reading materials.  I found that very hard to do with AO because it was so packed with long readings—I would have basically had to start from scratch.  MA had much more room left in the schedule to either extend lesson times or add in other interests.

Of course, you don't have to be as scheduled as I am; unschoolers are laughing at me right now.  It works very well for us, and it gives us the rest of the day for unstructured learning or for outside activities.  It's the best of both worlds for us.