Do most people do weekly lesson plans? I don't really do them. The only thing I really have to prepare for is history/science and usually I have an idea of what I want to teach that day and so it only takes me like 5-10 min to prepare each day, and I do that while the kids are doing their handwriting assignment first thing in the morning, which takes them about 15 min. We spend 45-60 min in science or history each day (more history than science though), and everything else is independent work. They do 1-2 math lessons with teaching textbooks 4 days a week, one hour of essay/research paper writing twice a week, and work an hour in their total language plus books twice a week. They do Awana studies for 20)30 min every day, 30)45 min silent reading every day, 30 min German twice a week, and 30 min typing twice a week, and 20 min bible study every day. Plus some type of PE every day. So our weeks are fairly routine, and doesn't require much planning ahead from me. When they need help, I am always available to assist. Although, some times they try and ask for help on math tests, so I have gotten hip to that trick. LOL.
For me? Yes and no. Mostly I have a list of subjects I hope to accomplish each day. I try to look ahead and figure out just what we are going to do for days 1 and 2 of science and days one and 2 of history and our day of social studies. But I don't always. Our math is do the next lesson, and there is very little prep time.. mostly just "We need the pattern blocks and some of the cards, 'insert kiddo whose lesson it is here', please go get them from the stack of tubs so we can begin." Then it is lightly scripted and we just follow along. I do have our Total Reading workbooks scheduled out, because we bounce around it and don't go in order through the book, plus it has more pages than we would accomplish a year if we just did the next page.
I do a weekly plan. I make it up on Friday or Sunday based on the schedule for the next week. I use a plan sheet that has the days and the subjects on it. Then I fill in what dd needs to cover each day for that subject. We do not always hit each subject each day. We like this because then dd can see every day exactly what she needs to do.
I've been homeschooling since my oldest was in K (before that really...but whatever :lol: ) and she's 20 now. I've never done lesson plans. Last year, I started thinking...hmm...maybe I should do a lesson plan. I didn't really know what that meant. What I did was I figured out how many days of school we had to do, how many lessons/pages in each subject/book...figured out what pages had to be done each day (this took quite a bit of work!)...wrote in their individual planners each day the subject and what pages had to be done...um, for the.whole.year. :roll: The first two weeks worked out really great! Then....all heck broke lose when we got off track from being sick. Now our days didn't match what was written on it that day (our days were ahead of what the pages were)...it became an absolute mess. This would have been solved if I just did it weekly, I guess. :lol: Now I'm back to what I used to do....sort of. I just have a schedule of what is done each day. Usually M, W are the same schedule and T, and TH are the same schedule, Fri shakes things up a bit. So, today I just look at what subjects we have and we just do the next lesson in the book. I think this might be the extent of my lesson planning.
I complete 2 weeks' worth of lesson plans at a time (one week per page); I print out these pretty basic Word charts (one for each kiddo), and place them in plastic sleeves so that the kids can use a dry-erase marker to cross off each completed item. At the end of the week, the plans go into my binder for my records. Completing them a couple weeks in advance also allows me enough time to request the various library materials we will need.
This is our first year not unschooling, I was doing weekly plans, but then as my parents started needing more and more of my time, I've had to switch to things that plan themselves, we just move on to the next lesson each day. My planning is putting a bookmark in the book when we finish our lesson each day LOL
Sonlight makes my lesson plans for me I did plan out Math and Learning to Read on a calendar to see how long the books we have would last. But I definitely don't make weekly lesson plans.
I don't do detailed lesson plans. I do have a file here on the computer with an outline of where I think we should be at the end of each week and I loosely plan our social studies/science topics out ahead of time but I don't have a daily checklist or anything, it's mostly in my head. I've tried being more detailed about lesson plans but then I always felt guilty when life happened. For our three R's we really use all do the next thing curriculum so planning isn't really necessary to me.
I do yearly plans and adjust the schedule as our needs change. I don't do page numbers assigned to a day though. I list assignments chronologically and we have a set amount of time for the subject and we just go down the list or to the next lesson until the time runs out.
I do yearly assignments. I have a calendar with the weeks we'll do school, and I look to see how many lessons I want to cover in each subject, and then divide it evenly over the year. What usually happens is that I have 36 weeks, but only 28-32 weeks worth of work. That gives us time to catch up when something happens to get us off schedule. I don't plan the actual assignments per day until each week comes around. I need to know what we have going on that week so I can work school around our schedule. We basically end up with the same routine every week (more or less), so even if I don't have the lesson plans done, we already know what needs to be started, and my kids can do it while I write out plans on the fly.
I do and it has been the best thing we've done to our days! I write them in my book Sunday night for the upcoming week. A lot of the work is already done for me because we use My Father's World and they do up a weekly plan. I take that plan and put it into my book on different days than they dictate and then I add in math, LA, writing, Spanish, famous artist studies ect. Then each day I put the 7-10 assignments in file folders for each kid (work box style) and they work independently with me nearby for help. We also do family read alouds and some projects that I come up with in addition to the written curriculum. It makes school so logical and comfortable it's great! I don't worry if we mess up a day (today the kids decided to play outside instead of work) because we'll be off one day and then do school on Saturday.
I plan my hear on Homeschool Tracker, and then write them in the paper planners each week. I can modify things online if we miss a day, which makes it easy for me to see the big picture and make sure we are staying on track. But I'm not erasing too much when I print them once per week.
I wish I were that organized. I have never done them in the 15 years I have been homeschooling. I have an idea if what I want to accomplish but sometimes it happens and sometimes uts does not. Plus on a rare occasion we get more done than I expect to. Organization not my strong point but I do work hard at it.
Can't tell you what "most" people do, but for me, it's a resounding NOPE!!! We open the book, and do whatever lesson is on that page. The next day, we do the next lesson. If someone is sick, or had trouble or something, I have the freedom to let it go a day, or re-do it or whatever without worrying about it messing up my plans. Now, I might type up something for copywork in history or something, but it's not "written down".
I agree with everything Jackie said. I have never done any lesson plans in all of my years of homeschooling. The only paperwork I do is record keeping at the end of the school year.
depends on my child.... yep - for me it's per child.... Jake NEEDS a lay out or else I have no idea what the boy will get done. Alexis is just ----- well Alexis....... at this point she may be studying the moon Actually she likes to work through her assignments and workbooks and she goes from there... Karina just works.... if she has extra time she's doing school work. It all works out for her... So my 2 girls - no planning (YEA!!).... my boy.... there are too many "Will you just get SOMETHING done today??" moments.... however he does like to do manual labor (he helped our employee clean out the chicken coop today)
Good point! Some kids work better with a plan, others don't. So even with this we might need to be flexible.
yes, we do weekly plans.. Been doing them for a month now and it has really simplified things for us.. We place everything in a binder behind daily dividers and if we have to go somewhere we grab the binder and are good to go.. Makes their work much more portable..
