And those of you who do, do you save the old ones? Do you write lesson plans every day or do it all at once for the whole week? I spend a good 2-3 hours on weekends going through the next weeks materials, writing lesson plans, making up cards/activities as needed. I feel horrible right now. It's almost 10am and I just finished everything- started at 7:30. Dd is sick and is just laying on the couch watching tv, but I know she's bored. I do this every weekend. I've thought of writing them nightly for the next day but then I'm afraid I won't be full prepared. I'm going through a lot of paper too! I made up my own sheet with each subject on it with plenty of writing room- I basically write a description of what we're going to do, page numbers, ect and check it all off as we go. I have a homeschool friend here who thinks I'm nuts lol. "I can't believe you sit down and do that every weekend!" Of course she has one of the Core programs from Sonlight that has EVERYTHING written out for her and she doesn't have to do a thing. I don't have 800 dollars to do that. So am I the only crazy one? lol
Yep -2-3 hrs. every weekend. This is the first year I have done it this way and I find that although it is a lot of work, I am SO on top of things this way. You're not the only one--I promise the other mom's I know that hs do pretty much the same way too!! At least you're done....I haven't started.(sigh)
I spend about 4 hours every other weekend. I plan two weeks at a time and make any copies, etc. that I need. I do not write out detailed lesson plans, but just what what each child (3 of them) needs to do each day. My 2closest hs'ing friends use boxed curriculums. They say they couldn't do it the way I do. I couldn't so it the way they do. I don't have the money, plus I like to be able to plan things the way I like them and the way that works for my family.
You know I like the idea of doing it two weeks out. That's a very good idea! I think I may start doing that. Makes sense and it would be nice to have a whole weekend with no planning lol. My mother SHOULD be impressed that I am even doing any of this. She'll never admit if she is or not. But I was so unorganized in jh and hs that they put me in sylvan for study skills and study planning. Here I am 13 years later putting all those skills to good use lol.
I will write my own too.. and when i log the hours I am very detailed.. it takes time but i want to make sure i have it all right!
I wrote the unit study we are working on over the course of two weekends working mostly at night from about 7 pm to 10:30 pm. This study should take us about 2 1/2 months or so to finish. Every Saturday or Sunday night I sit down and look at what I have planned for the upcoming week (takes about 10 minutes). In the morning with my coffee sometimes I'll check the next day's schedule to be sure I have all the craft materials lined up, etc. Doing the whole shabang over the course of a weekend is great because on these nights they hang out with dh or play games with each other or watch a movie. I think it is worth it because I wanted a unit study that was chronological and historical. I also wanted most things to be hands-on. I copy/paste things from the net into handouts if there are good pics and easy to understand. Some things are really detailed if I don't think I'll remember everything I'm supposed to cover. Others I just write "talk about city-state/implement game". I know that "talking about city-state/implement game" is a brief overview of what type of government that is, and then every kid has a room they are the "king" of, deciding certain rules and dealing with squabbles between the others. To me, a boxed curriculum would bore my kids (not to mention me) to death. I like making real mudbricks, and making models with real dirt and water to show irrigation, and cooking the foods of the time we are studying. For math, not only do we do a worksheet and whatnot, we also figure out how far our irrigation canals have to be and so forth. For literature we are reading Gilgamesh Trilogy (one that is geared for the kids) so they can hear about the time we are working on in a fictional way. We write stories about the time, our spelling words are centered around the time we are studying, etc. I know it is a lot of work, but it is the only way for us. For a lot of people boxed curriculums work and the kids love the workbooks and stuff, and that's totally okay. I'm happy the government doesn't regulate how we decide to homeschool.
I do my own. Couple of things that I have learned that tend to save me some "hubby time" spent doing lesson plans. I'll pick a subject and lets follow math for a minute. I take the math book and sit down with notebook paper (when we still used the write on workbooks I'd pull the pages out of the workbook) and I open up the math book and say ok...A lesson (notice I didn't number the lesson) will be pages 45-47 and the topic. I write this information on the paper and then flip to the next do the same thing until I get tired of doing that. lol So...now what I have is a bunch of lessons all set to go no hunting for the paper to do them on it's all a "set" if you will. Then I put it in "the assignment notebook" My notebook if you will. We use Rod & Staff English - I do the same thing for this only it comes with a lesson number so I tend to write that on the paper as well. Why? Cuz it's there. lol We use Spelling Workout so...I tear the book completely apart and put it in several of the plastic pockets for 3 ring notebooks - the pages are smaller and if you hole punch them it chops stuff out. On Monday we do the words orally site unseen and highlight them in the dictionary section that came in the book, Tues write words, Wed SW pages, Th write words, Fri test. So...I take and put L# on a blank sheet of paper and we use that same paper on T & Th to write the words (use both sides that way) then I put a sheet in that is for the test on Friday that has the L# on it. I then arrange all these papers as I would assign them in MY notebook. Ok...so...do you see my trend. Anything that I can I put in the assignment notebook so I can grab and go if I need to. I also try to do lesson planning while they are working. Sometimes you just have some down time while they are working on something and I will write stuff down then. By having everything in my notebook I can travel and do lesson planning on the couch, at the ice rink during practice or whatever. Sorry so long. Hope it helped some. I know that the notebook has saved me a lot of time pulling things out every week.
I have two kids...both on a boxed curriculum set with fully written teachers manuals and I still spend about 2 hours planning the next week's flow. But I also spend about 30-45 mins a day preparing for the next day...getting materials together, etc. So, even witha boxed curriculum, it can still be pretty intensive.
I do not consistently plan for a specific period of time. I should. I will plan a few days out, then perhaps only the next day, then a weeks worth and so forth. This is our second year of HSing and we are in 1st grade. We used work book curriculum for 2 subjects and other things for the rest. I enjoyed planning the lessons for science and doing the extra stuff for social studies. I do not believe that I couuld at this time do a good job of planning all of the lessons for all subjects. I do however look over what is coming up in the workbook based subjects and plan additions/supplementations. This usually only takes a few minutes to plan.
I plan my unit studies ahead of time i try and fit as much into the school holidays as possible...so at the moment I have about 8 unit studies ready and waiting to go in my folder. I also plan the following week out, usually while the kids are working on something at the end of the week before. Because we are just moving through our unit study and other materials sequentially, it doesn't take a lot of time, maybe 10-30 mins. I find that planning the big stuff ahead of time frees me up a lot, so that during term time, I can use that time to mark their work, and keep my records up to date. I have to say that the record keeping is nowhere near as fun as lesson planning - but as it is required here...a necessary evil.
I actually enjoy writing them out- dh thinks I'm sick in the head. I have to do it earlier in the day though because by evening I'm so tired and my brain is mush. I do go everything in the morning before dd is up- with my cup of coffee.
I write my own lesson plans. I spend about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours doing it. I only have 1 ds that I do it for. I have taken the books to piano lessons with me while my oldest ds takes his lesson about an hour I've worked on it then. I like to do it myself. I get up in morning and look over my plans. Ds will say what are we doing today mom? This is my 1st year of hs we pulled our son in Feb. I'm so thankful everyday that I'm home schooling him.
NO WAY do I write them out! And no, I don't have a boxed curriculum! Part of the problem is that I wrote them out when I was in the classroom, and by noon on Monday, I was SO OFF that I felt it was a waste of time. I've tried to write them out, but again, find that I don't stick to them. The only thing I stick to really is Rachael's science. I give her the what needs to be done when for the Module. That covers two weeks. She has that assignment paper, and crosses them off each day. But that's her, doing it independently!
We don't really write them out. I follow half-arsed, the curriculum out of the Learn at home series, grade 2 for both boys. I started fresh with both boys in January really because one child was exceeding 1st grade and the other (while the school stated that he along with 90% of the other 2nd grades were on the honorabled) was at about the same level as my younger child I try to keep on task with that, however I have been working with the Hooked pn phonics for reading, mostly since the books suggested in the curriculum is not always available at the library. Social studies at the moment, I am 100% on task. We are learning the states and capitals and where they are on the US map. However with the neighborhood/city stidies (we live in a small city) I worked on other aspects of social studies. Same with some of the simple basic math. Now, every morning I do write in a journal our daily plans. Check them off as we go, add whatever more we may add. I just started officially homeschooling in January. I am still trying to give them some time to de-school, however I do not want them completely off task, so we do spend about 2 hours a day working on something.
At the beginning of each year, I make my own lesson plan book. I write out any routine items on the pages before I make copies. This really saves time thoughout the year because we do unit studies, so any repeat items that I can keep from having to rewrite every week saves me time for the non-routine lessons. For example, we use Lifepacs for math. So, under Math, I have written on each day, "Lifepac Unit ___ Section ____." All I have to fill in are the numbers. It allows flexibility and saves my writing for the lessons I create. I bind the pages with a comb binder, so I can change out any pages in the event that I ever need to make major changes to my forms.
