who stays up late getting lessons together??? Seriously, there has GOT to be a better way. I feel so completely disorganized if I don't do this because I feel they aren't getting all they need. The next day I scramble to find the stuff to do for their lesson. For example, I feel the kids need "more" than just me reading from their science text. I want them to have videos and then I have spent a ton of time finding and printing out things for lapbooking that they can use along with the text. I don't have the $$ to purchase the cd's from Apologia or I would just do that. I've added fun books in to help keep their attention on what I want them to learn. Their lessons are still short, but there's more in them than just me reading a text and them doing a hands on expirament.. But, it's driving me NUTS!! Why can't I get this done during the day??
Hi this is my first year homeschooling so I'm sure a lot of the moms will have some great ideas to help get you organized. I work full time out of the home so I had to try to get organized from the beginning or I knew I would be going crazy. When I know I will use a book as part of a curriculum, I put everything from the table of contents into a lesson plan from homeschool tracker. This takes a lot of time upfront but saves time in the end. I have the entire year of lesson plans in the tracker and assigned to each of my 2 children that are homeschooled this year. I print out a months worth of assignments and put it in their assignment notebook. Now we have a baseline to know what to expect for the day/week/month. If something comes up we can see what we had planned and adjust what needs to be adjusted. I don't know how old your children are but mine are 9 and 12 and able to work independently with the assignment notebooks. I have an inbox for papers that need to be graded and an out box for graded papers and I try to grade at least every other day and record the grades in my tracker. I keep a white board that lists the things that don't go in the assignment notebooks such as quiz reminder, upcoming experiments, etc. We don't let the assignment notebooks dictate our day but it's a great way for us to know where we are at any given point if we plan to complete a book within the 180 days of school. This works even if you don't use books from the same company. We use time4learning, apologia, mystery of history, teaching textbooks, and others. Things we don't do everyday such as art, phys ed, French and piano/guitar also go in the assignments as placeholders.
Wow!! You are AWESOME! This is my 4th year and you would think by now, I would have some sort of system.
I was going to say much of what Sonya said. The only difference is that I bet Sonya does it! LOL. I have all the organization tools and ideas but hardly ever get it going. UGH. I do however make out the full year's schedule or at least one semester before school starts. That helps a lot.
I typically spend the summer doing all the planning for the school year. Otherwise I would be spending too much time everyday. Today is our first day of school. We started late because I wasn't finished planning it out You can see our system here.
You're not the only one. I sometimes have to tell my son what to start on in the morning, while I schedule the rest of the day. I am getting better and several times this year I have scheduled several days to a week. That is about as far as I want to go, because if we hit a hard part in a subject I can adjust as needed without changing a whole year's worth of plans.
I'm kinda in the middle. I planned out the units and looked over all the subjects we will be covering this year. I have lapbook materials ready, science equipment ready, and etc. Each night though I have to pull out what we will be using and make plans for how I want the next day to be scheduled. I have it mostly down, but find that I am still up each night getting it all organized and figuring out how it will work with other things that have come up such as appointments, park days, and etc.
We mostly unschool so I don't do too much planning, but I do plan some-to guide and expose to new things and hubby requires me to do somethings whether Ephram wants to or not... But did you know currclick has $15 Apologia lapbooks? That might save you some time?? Though not much...
I get frustrated when I plan and then we don't do what I had planned. It seems like such a waste of my time. I know I'm supposed to be "flexible" and I am to some degree, BUT it seems like when we don't do the planned activity or subject that I have for that day, that particular part of our curriculum gets pushed aside and never done.. I'm getting better, I actually planned two weeks of Math for my older son and even though we didn't do our math on Friday, we are still on schedule.. Yay!! I have our science scheduled, but not to my liking. We are doing Apologia Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day for the youngers. I want to add more books for my youngest child and some other things for my ds12. Who WILL NOT do ANYTHING on his own.. He's DRIVING ME NUTS.. But that's a whole other thread.. Anyhow, I have some movies coming from netflix that we are going to use for this study. So I do have some of that planning out of the way. Maybe I'm trying to do too much in one day.. We were so much more relaxed last year. But I also felt like they weren't learning enough. So This year I put it in high gear.. Now I have burn out WAY too early in the year. Stressing over my son's high school transcripts aren't helping the matter any either. I want him to have some things on his transcript that he's not ready for yet. He should be, but he's not. I want to make sure he's getting an education that will prepare him for college. He's really looking at that route and I'm hoping he continues to feel drawn that direction. He's an independant learner so that's a HUGE plus. But still, I have a hard time staying out of his lessons. If ya know what I mean. I'm trying to plan things so he can have More on his transcripts.. I'm seriously driving myself crazy.
What movies do you have coming from netflix for the flying creatures? We have netflix and are also doing the flying creatures. So say you plan to do something Tuesday, but you don't get around to it Tuesday, do you not just move it back to Wednesday, maybe do it first thing Wednesday? How old are your younger kids?
No, I had no idea they had them for that price.. That's pretty good. Maybe for our Botony book I'll get one from them. Right now I'm using resources I got from Homeschoolshare.com They're nice and the fact that they are Free is awesome. I keep hoping that some of the lapbooking CD's will show up on curriculumshare But so far nothing.. I've received a lot of nice things from there though. Love that website. Angela
Magic School Bus: Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! For lesson 11. There's also a beehive "virtual Field trip" at http://www.ccpollen.com/pgtour.shtml that we will "probably" do for that lesson. I haven't decided yet if it's something that would work for them. The other thing I got was for History. We're studying Ancient Greece using the guide from Simply Charlotte Mason. So I have Drive thru History coming for that. Hopefully the youngers will like them. My younger ones are 6 and 10. I also have a 14 year old and an almost 13 year old. This is our 4th year homeschooling. By now, you think I would have it all down pat.. But I don't. I'm a perfectionist and that's part of the problem. If it's not perfect we don't do it. I'm working on that by making myself just jump in and do what ever needs to get done.. Sometimes...
We do a checklist system, so I do check lists for the kids and print them out on Sunday nights. I ususally have 6-9 weeks of checklists done at one time, and while it is a lot of work and I sometimes have to modify them depending on what we've completed in previous weeks, it is nice not to race around lesson planning on sundays. My familyd.50megs.com website below has examples of my lesson plans and chekcklists if you want to take a look.
I spend one day a week making lesson plans up for the following week. So far it's working and if I am sick we use the week to review and use workbooks
hmmm.... can you give yourself a time limit? For instance, get up early in the morning and while the kids are doing chores and breakfast and having a bit of play time do an hour or hour and half of planning time? I find if I don't set a time limit for myself, I look up and it's been much longer than I intended.
Good idea! I've been trying really hard not to spend as long at night planning. It makes me feel that all I do is mess with school. Then that leads to big time BURN OUT.. So I've written out lesson plans for my ds14 for his math for 2 weeks. He's already gone through one week and is nearly finished with the other so, I'll spend a little bit each day after I go over his work deciding what to do next in math. More practice or move on.. I have a homeschool "journal" that I write down brain storm ideas as they come to me when I'm grading their work. I go back over those entries sometimes and that helps me plan. I've actually done good this week with the planning. I know what they are supposed to be doing for every day because I look ahead in the books and get the supplies ready. My daughter is doing book 1 in All About Spelling. So after each lesson, as we're cleaning up, I take a quick glance at what will be going on the next day and pull out the cards and letter tiles we need. I've got the kids work printed out in their language arts binder so I don't have to worry about that for a few more weeks. I feel more in control. It's nice. Now if I could just get my 12 year old to do his work we'll be doing good...
