I plan 6-12 weeks at a time depending on our schedule. I used to try to do all subjects everyday but we became so overwhelmed that we ended up fighting alot. I switched our schecule mid year to math, reading, and spelling everyday, language arts, social studies, and writing 3x a week, science, and history 2x a week, and art, occupational education, and music 1x a week. It works so much better for us and my kids look forward to the art, music and science days.
I have a general schedule for the entire year. Then I break it all down per 12 week term. From there I print a weekly schedule every Sunday.
I will generally make my plans a week or two at a time. I have a general overview plan I do monthly but as far as what pages to work on, what books I need from the library, and the like I do that weekly. I do not do every subject every day for my children, We do math, reading/phonics/spelling (at this young age it's pretty much all related), handwriting, and bible daily. Then we do History 2-3 x a week (depending on how many projects and read alongs we have), science 1-2x a week (again depening on projects and read alongs), and we have directed art once a week (I give them a specific skill to work on from Rod and Staff Artpacs), I also do a lesson from English from the roots up 1-3x per week. The also have a time each day for undirected art (coloring, painting, cuttitng and pasting), journaling, drawing, or music (they choose what they'd like to do and do it). They get PE daily either at the park, the pool, or playing wii fit, and we also sing daily so they get a little music every day. Really our "school" day is only a couple of hours long, but much of what we do each day is school, and I've learned to count it even though it's not in the lesson plan.
I, too, have a general schedule for the entire year, usually. So I know how many days each subject is going to take (we have to account for 180 days). BUT...I don't place it in their schedule until about 2 weeks before. For example, I just planned out the next 3 weeks. (and that's a stretch for me). I use all my "annual schedules" to fill out their schedule. I should only have 4 more weeks to go. I hope! LOL EVERY DAY we do: Grammar Spelling Writing Math Bible History OR Geography Our Read Aloud that goes with H&G A L/A Daily Response sheet that goes with our Read Aloud Science we do at co-ops, so we usually do any homework or prep work for those. Art & Music are covered at a co-op, as is PE Then each kid has their own sport on it's own schedule (oldest & youngest do gymnastics; middle does Karate)
One week at a time. My dad has Alzheimers and I never know when I will be needed. We use the DVD's from A Beka, and they have a yearly schedule, but it is very hard to stick to it with my dad's condition. Of course that is for my 9th grader. My dd is done with school (K) and is using workbooks from the $ Store to supplement.
I'm one of those OCD freaky people who literally has everything planned on a spreadsheet for the next 5 years. *blush* Seriously. I've already bought some of the stuff and started browsing it. LOL! I've got a rough sketch planned through high school.
I can never do all subjects on the same day. I would like my girls to understand and enjoy what they do rather than finishing to get done on certain days. we do Reading and math daily we designated Monday for homework. they have weekend school homework.Co-op homework and foreign language homework.plus math+reading and online work(Cosmeo.com for history, spelling City, I knowthat.com,map work) Tuesday is Co-op day Wednesday+Thursday+Friday.they do History,vocab,grammar,reading and math.
This year I planned the whole year at once. I do some core subjects every day, but other subjects are once or twice a week. I prefer bigger chunks of time than a little bit every day. Because I did a whole year I have needed to change things that weren't working or if a child needs to go faster or slower through a curriculum. I just revise the week's schedule when we are ready to start a new week with any necessary changes. You can see an example of my schedule here.
Here's what's been working for me/us: About half way through the current year, I choose texts or series for the next year. If I haven't already picked something up, this is the time I started looking for it. Monthly, I plan out about the next four (sometimes five) weeks' worth of work, and I try to print any and all worksheets at this point and put them into weekly piles. We don't do every subject everyday. Daily, I would say we cover math, reading/phonics, spelling/phonics (depending on how old someone is). We also do something to encourage fine motor development, although not necessarily handwriting/copywork. My goal is to get through the week's worth of work by Friday afternoon. If we finish early, we get Friday off, but that happens rarely. As far as which days we do "non-daily" topics, that changes according to what's working at the time. Right now, family wide, we emphasize science on Tues, Wed, & Thurs, just because we do a book for science 2x a week, and we have a class on Wed. In a few weeks, we'll finish our book and move to another...which we'll do 3x a week, but the class will be finished, so maybe we'll switch to science on MWF. My oldest loves science, so he reads something daily on his own.
Hold on to your hats....we take one day at a time. I used to plan a week at a time, but I had to adjust it so often that it started to become a hassle. We make sure and do math, LA, Bible reading and history or science daily. We have other activities (band, sports, clubs) on various days that work into our schedule. Now, that is not to say that I don't have a mental game plan for the coming months/years, I just don't write down assignments in a planner that far in advance. In IL, we are not required to keep track of the days and/or hours of instruction. Each morning, I get up, do my devotions and then jot down the school work in our notebook to get crossed off the list each day. Many times, dd10 is already up and getting to her work. She usually writes her own things down in the school notebook. Ds13 usually gets up and asks for what is expected of him that day. At least he asks, right?! :lol:
This will be my 1st year. But here's what I'm thinking.... (LOL we'll see how it actually plays out! hahaha) What I got so far is a 36 week curriculum for all 5 subjects I'm required to teach. All planned out for me online for free. My plan is to look up what the curriculum has planned 2 week ahead of time-but do it weekly...print my printables, figure out the online games, gather supplies ect LOL (so I have a back up week all laid out in case of a busy week) Then of course I want to do some child-led/unschooling. So what he wants to learn about will come into play. The curriculum I've found covers a lot of stuff he's into though, so I think we'll stick to it, but maybe no in the order the website has planned... As for every subject every day-NO!!! LOL I know that won't work for us, not even gonna try! We will have reading/language arts and math daily. And devotional daily. And I'm thinking Yoga daily. (I got some 10 minute workouts) My other 2 required subjects of science and social studies I haven't quite figured out yet...I'm waiting to hear from a co-op about a class, if I can get him in social studies class, I'm not gonna teach it LOL So he would just have that once a week at co-op. Science, we'll probably do often, though not daily. He's really into science stuff, so I think naturally it will come up often... The only other thing I plan to 'teach' is health/PE of course he'll get physical activity daily outside, which I'll count as PE whether it is 'structured' games or not. And health I figure we'll hit about once a week. We'll see how it goes....
For the past few years with sd I planned out the entire year and then would weekly print out what was due that week. For dd this year we have been using Sonlight which is pretty much planned out. I did put it in HST+ but have not gotten to do the last quarter but I do not think I will. I have been working out of the Sonlight book and it has been working fine. I just grab the next sheet in Math and Phonics. I have not been doing a formal art class, just crafts and projects that go along with history. I just added Music using The Story of the Orchestra which we will now do daily for about 5-10min. Next year I do not think I am going to really use HST since I plan on using Sonlight again. I might use it for Art, Music and Latin to make a general plan and print that off. I have to see what I end up buying and deciding to use next year.
What is HST? Probably a no brainer....... When I google it is comes up "Hubble Space Telescope" and I am pretty sure that is not what you are using as curriculum, haha!
At first I spent all summer planning every day of every week for the school year. Due to one hiccup after another, I had to revise the schedule. The following year I only planned for a quarter of the year at a time. Due to one hiccup after another, I had to revise the schedule again. The next year I only planned for only one month at a time. Guess what, I still had to revise my schedule. I spent another year of revising. Now I don't make a daily schedule. I figure out approximately how long it will take to do each subject. For example, math curriculum is already planned for one lesson a day for 180 days of school. That is simple. Science may have 10 chapters. I just figure out how many pages a day needs to be done to finish in 180 days. Don't forget to figure in tests and projects. BTW, projects always take longer than planned. I always allow extra days in the year to spend extra time on a difficult lesson. Once every subject is broken down to how much needs to be done each day, I then note on the calendar where we should be at the end of each 45 days. At this time I then figure out if all subjects will be done five days a week or perhaps science and history will be done twice a week and we have art one day a week. When the child is in high school, they will need to keep track of their own time, but I still have it broken down to how much needs to be done each day, at least approximately. This method may sound very lackadaisical, but it works. Our home schedule is always changing due to the unpredictable schedule of my husband. Why give my self more work than necessary.
Planning is a day to day deal at our home. Subjects like math, reading, and language are covered everyday. But I do not have a set plan because we would stray from it.
I started home schooling last November and made a schedule for us to get through the books by the end of May. That schedule has been shredded and I think the dog ate it because I have had to make so many changes to it that I couldn't even read it any more rofl! I found the schedule to be a big part of my stress when it came to home schooling. Got rid of the schedule and started really enjoying homeschooling my ds. For this next year, I am setting a goal to break our books down somewhat by months, but life throws so many curves at us that I will not be making a daily schedule again.
