4Real Forums: Planning...

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Planning and Ordering our Days
4Real Forums : Planning and Ordering our Days

Topic: Planning...

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UK Mum
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Joined: Aug 23 2007
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Posted: Sept 24 2007 at 5:03am \| IP Logged

Hello
I am very new to home schooling...hust beginning 'officially'. I would love to hear how everyone goes about planning their year, month, season, week, day...you get the picture

especially when one uses unit studies as a big part of the childrens education.
Thankyou!

nicole-amdg
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Posted: Sept 24 2007 at 6:26pm \| IP Logged

Hi, UK Mum! Those are some big questions. I think it's safe to say that no one plans the same way as anyone else, but the method or philosophy of homeschooling that most draws you in will have a lot to do with it. I assume since you are here that you are leaning at least somewhat toward Charlotte Mason. Have you read any books about this way to homeschool?

When I started, I used Catholic Education: Homeward Bound for a lot of my "formation" and it had a helpful section on planning. (First, plan your goals for the year, then month, week, day. Basically.) I also started out with a prepackaged classical curriculum. Since then I have become less formal and more experimental. I learned more about CM and other ways to homeschool, I read more books, including Elizabeth's Real Learning, and I discovered new inspirations in my kids' interests. The result, in a nutshell, is that I have a basic multi-year idea for how to cover history and science, I move through math and language arts skills according to each child's abilities, and I am very flexible about unit studies so that we can cover feast days, beloved books, and other such things at a pace dictated by our family life.

You're probably going to spend at least the first year learning what works for your family. I know that's pretty general, but maybe it will help narrow down some questions for you. I'll think on it. Or maybe someone with clearer thoughts or greater wisdom can give you a better answer!

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UK Mum
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Posted: Sept 25 2007 at 1:52pm \| IP Logged

Thanks Nicole..please do some pondering for me! Planning goals for a year seems so huge to me, atm! all advice welcomed

Leonie
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Posted: Sept 25 2007 at 6:24pm \| IP Logged

I tend to look at a term rather than at a whole year - a term is about ten weeks here in Australia.

Kim hosted a fair on the loveliness of back to school, and on planning - have a read!

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Leonie in Sydney
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Posted: Sept 26 2007 at 3:36am \| IP Logged

Thanks, Leonie. That will be useful.

Kathryn UK
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Posted: Sept 26 2007 at 3:49am \| IP Logged

I tended to plan in half-terms, reckoning a term as 12 weeks and a half-term as six weeks. Usually that would allow us to work a little less than school going friends

. We didn't do unit studies as such, but often things would fall into themes that would fit nicely into a half-term. I always tried to plan in some catch-up time so that we had a realistic chance of finishing things. Say I wanted to do science twice a week, I would plan ten sessions for a half-term and leave the last week free. That way we could either do whatever life had interrupted, or could have a light week at the end of the half-term.

I found it helpful to plan in detail for the first couple of weeks of the school year (or term, if we were changing things significantly). I liked to draw up a daily schedule, more to see if it was realistic to fit everything I wanted to do into a day than because I actually intended to stick to it. It gave me a base to work from, then once we got started it soon became obvious which bits worked and which bits didn't, so I could tweak accordingly. After two or three weeks we would get into a workable routine and wouldn't need the schedule any more.

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