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I am looking forward to having a whole day at home. We can get in a full day of school and some fun activities too (like painting the sun!).
Homeschool Planning I am really enjoying planning my homeschool days. I sit on the couch with books all around me. I have the tv on for background noise as I pour over the different materials and lesson plans. I make notes about what things to include and what things to omit. I am finding what works and what doesn't. Each family is different and the curriculum may need to be modified to fit the needs of each individual family. I am learning to use the curriculum in ways that work for us. For My Father's World K I am changing up what days we do things on. I am mixing in the book days during the rest of the week. I am making things work.
My Planner Page I have a planner page that I use. I made it after trying many others and finding nothing that worked for me. At the top of the page I have a space for the date. There are 2 columns with boxes. Each box has a specific subject or curriculum. If I am using more than one material for a subject I may have each one listed or just the subject. Each night when I sit down to plan I grab my planner page and work with it. I put a line through the boxes of any subjects that we are not doing that day and circle the titles of the ones we are. Then I start filling in the details of each subject. I look in the Teacher's Manuals etc and quickly review the lesson plans and make any notes in the TM that I need to. I also double check that we don't need any extra materials (if we do the lesson may need to wait until I can get them - I hate this...). Right now I have photocopying to do and I can't get that done until Wednesday so I am having to work around that. It is a bit frustrating as I want to keep moving forward. We will keep moving in whatever subjects we can. This has been the simplest way of planning that I have found and I have tried many ways.
Planning For The Year It has been helpful to look at how long each curriculum is going to take. For Horizons Math there are 160 lessons. If we do math 5 days a week it will take 32 weeks to complete. If we do math 6 days a week it will take 26 weeks to complete. It is just helpful to have some idea. We don't have to finish everything this year. We can carry things over the summer. We can carry things over to next year. Some subjects lend themselves to bunny trails and who knows which bunny trails we will take until we get there.
My Planning Times I enjoy my planning times. They are a time to think about how the boys are doing. They are a time to think about the direction we are going. They are a time to evaluate the curriculum and materials we are using. I also sometimes dream and think about what fun and exciting curriculum we will use next year. I love planning and organizing.
Okay, that's enough. It's time to get the boys organized for school.
Honey
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