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UK Mum
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| Posted: Jan 31 2008 at 7:51am | IP Logged
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when do you do your planning? there are so many very creative ladies on here...they have so many great ideas for their children of all ages. How do you fit it all in???? do you have a set method of planning?. Please share any thoughts you have! I struggle to do everything i would like.
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Sarah M
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| Posted: Jan 31 2008 at 10:05am | IP Logged
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In the evening, after the kids are in bed. Or in the wee hours of the morning, when everyone is asleep. I have a hard time finding time during the day. I would love to have a planning day once or twice a month- and have my MIL watch the kids for a couple of hours in the morning so I can hide away and knock out a bunch of planning, but I haven't been able to manage that yet.
I'm also finding that I don't plan much more than 1 month in advance. If I do, I don't feel the same freedom to explore Rabbit Trails and spontaneous interests. So I plan one *very* flexible month at a time.
I'm very interested to hear other ladies' strategies on carving out planning time...
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nissag
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So many of us use home management planners of one kind or another. Getting organised can be a monumental task, but in the end, you will find time to spare.
This book/planner, that I wrote, takes you through planning your daily schedule or "horarium", and special tasks for each day of the week to help you create a manageable agenda. There are dated block calendars, dated week-at-a-glance calendar, menu planners, health records, financial records, homeschool helps, birthday and address lists... All kinds of information to help you get organised.
If you take your planning in steps, you'll begin to notice that some things can clearly be scuttled, leaving the truly important things to take priority. you may find, after completing your agenda, that those things you wanted to do, just don't feel important to you anymore.
When you've got a bound book (or a pretty binder) to take along with you, prefilled with things like the liturgical seasons, Saint's days, etc. it is far easier to plan ahead for fun, educational opportunities. It's all right there in front of you. The key is to keep it handy all of the time.
Our home has run so much more smoothly since I got my schedule together. It was, as I said, a monumental task at first. It took months and months for me to create all the forms I wanted or needed, including the planner pages. But now it's all done! I may have to tweak my horarium or weekly activities from one year to the next, but it should remain largely the same.
An organised mama is a happy mama. And if mama is happy - everybody is happy!
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Nissa
Deacon's wife, mother of eleven, farmer, teacher, creator, cook.
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Tina P.
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| Posted: Jan 31 2008 at 10:18am | IP Logged
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I tend to make an overall, *very* general plan for the year before the beginning of school. Then, each semester, I make more specific plans for the older set ~ these are my 13 yob, my 12 yog, and my 10 yob. These plans include exactly (not that it always happens) what I expect to cover with them each month.
I sneak subjects for my little schoolers during quiet times (silent reading or table time). I try to vary my 8 yob's reading so that he touches on a great variety of subjects he needs to cover anyway: one saint book, one history book, one science-related title and one of his choice per month. These we discuss or he narrates naturally. We complete a science experiment sporadically (I intended to accomplish this once per week  ). And we all take nature walks once per week. Otherwise, science, history, and religion are done with the rest of the family.
My 6 yog is learning how to read and does her math mostly independently. She is incredibly driven, so she constantly asks me, "Can I have my math pages? Can we read?" I'm blessed that she *wants* to school and encourages me to help her! 
I hope this makes sense.
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
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UK Mum
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| Posted: Jan 31 2008 at 11:47am | IP Logged
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thank you for your thoughts, ladies. I think the thing i struggle with the most is, deciding on my plan *& sticking with it* LOL! There are soooo many wonderful idea's out there. so much i want to do with them. How do you you tailor your plans with differnt ages. I think, really, my question is more along the lines of 'how do you decide what it is you want to acheive for each child?' how do you not get swayed?
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Rachel May
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UK Mum wrote:
| I think, really, my question is more along the lines of 'how do you decide what it is you want to acheive for each child?' how do you not get swayed? |
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When I started homeschooling, I decided HOW I wanted to achieve their education first, ie what style of education best fit me and my kids. After deciding that, then I found a curriculum which tells me what to teach at which age. The one that I chose is very flexible, and I choose which subjects to follow and which to completely design myself. That saves me from reinventing the wheel.
For the subjects I design myself, I ask the kids what their interests are, and I use a series of books from the library (What Your xxx Grader Should Know) for help with what topics to cover and how in depth they need to be. That covers the bases for the standardized tests the kids have to take at the end of the year. Then I choose a bunch of living books, online activities, field trips, and suggestions from here to come up with a plan. We do 7 or 8 weeks of the regular curriculum which is planned for specific grades, and then take a week or 2 for the self-designed, multi-grade level rabbit trail/unit study subjects.
Hope that helps!
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Rachel
Thomas and Anthony (10), Maria (8), Charles (6), Cecilia (5), James (3), and Joseph (1)
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Sarah M
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| Posted: Jan 31 2008 at 4:59pm | IP Logged
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UK Mum wrote:
| I think, really, my question is more along the lines of 'how do you decide what it is you want to acheive for each child?' how do you not get swayed? |
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My kids are still young, but I figure my "big rocks"- the subjects I want to prioritize above all else are: Nature Study, Read aloud time, and living the liturgical year. Those are the subjects I make sure we have time for. When my oldest is 1st grade (next year), I'll make sure math/reading get higher on my priority list.  For now, we get to relish in the *good* stuff.
How do we not get swayed? We do. Constantly. Next year, I may use a spine curriculum like Oak Meadow or Living Books Curriculum (anyone have any recommendations?) for her basics. I'm a bit nervous about getting a whole curriculum package like that, because I rarely stick with one program. But I do think it would make planning much easier.
One thing that comforts me about "swaying" is Melissa Wiley's concept of Tidal Homeschooling. Tidal homeschooling not only gives permission to sway, but sees it as something a responsive mother does. It's all about following your children's lead and knowing that you aren't getting off track- this is the track!
Hope that makes sense. I got 6 teeth filled this afternoon and am feeling a bit loopy and very rambly.
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ALmom
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Ok, I'm an oddball here, but frankly I don't have time, energy or brainpower during the school year to do anything terribly creative. My major planning takes place in the summer before school starts and then we only tweak in the school year. What this means in implementation is that I have what I need on hand (many of my plans list alternatives that the child can choose and I have resources for all of these alternatives). Not all of it gets used for school, but all of it is here and since the stuff I really need to have planned and sure it is here are the real books on historical time periods or various science topics, project ideas for time periods, supplies, etc. they do eventually get read or projects get done by someone in the house.
We do tweak as we need to. I have a very, very hard time concentrating on more than one thing at a time. By planning ahead of time, I have woven things together in a way that seems logical and beneficial while (when that part of my brain is still functioning) allowing me to be more observant and responsive to the children during the school year when my time is so very, very limited and the sheer demands make me lose my memory. I know where we are headed and why I want to do each thing on the plans (even jot this down if I think I might forget in the heat of school). If a child becomes interested in something during the year or we have a unique opportunity that is not on the plan, there is almost always something whose purpose was such that we can easily substitute the new thing for something else and we do this. By having the plan, however, I don't derail us by endless rabbit trails and no attention to goals. I also do not hesitate to ditch something that is not working and revamp that portion of the plan as needed. I know a lot of folks find it a waste of time to have the whole year spelled out when you know you are not going to follow it to the letter. I find it very, very freeing. It lets me, personally, be way more creative than my natural tendencies would allow.
I suspect that the way I plan has tons to do with the number of people in my family AND my own limitations (I simply don't multitask well and I certainly don't remember much from minute to minute, etc. If things feel organized to me, I'm freer to observe, relax, be attentive to changing needs of the children, etc. and am much less likely to become a slave to anything. I and my children are not derailed by inevitable crisis.
A recent example: We've had horrible fleas - and have had to exit our home every 2 days for another spraying. We did study fleas for science in typical homeschooling fashion (a tweak to our science) but in the midst of exhaustion after washing linens, blankets, mattress pads and comforters for 7 different beds every other night, vacuuming like a maniac - twice every other day and once on the days in between, plus daily baths for 5 itchy children and combing the dog down and a few trips to the vet in between, 2 broken vehicles and one pair of bent eyeglasses we really have continued to school and achieve our goals with very little disruption. I'm amazed as I really expected to do much more ditching of things. My children liked having the plans, moving forward and kept on trekking even when I was talking to the pest control company most of the day close to meltdown mode. And, I'm so proud, my children also stepped up and offered services to help out - like vacuuming stairs (love the generosity of the 13 yo boy), cooking dinner, even the 10 and 5 yo helped with various aspects including demonstrating to the pest control people how they were hunting fleas (they literally were catching them either with tweezers or between their fingers and drowning them and keeping count of who found the most - one child found 25 in 5 minutes in one spot 2 days after a spraying). I think that is what finally convinced the pest control folks that we were not reintroducing fleas from the yard, but their chemicals were not getting to where our fleas were located!!!! Without plans already in place, we would have been seriously derailed for 2 weeks at least. As it turned out, each child has only lost one day and even more importantly, everyone was much happier with a clear idea of something to do at grandmothers house while I did what I had to do.
We are so much less stressed about school than ever before.
In any case, thought I'd share our planning time just in case their are other folks like me who simply cannot do much planning during the school year.
Janet
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SallyT
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I'm a macro-planner -- about this time of year I start thinking about the next year and what we want to accomplish. Then as budget permits, I buy whatever books I need. The books themselves are the plan, in a large sense. On a more micro-level, I don't do much formal planning, but as we move through books, I think from day to day about what would be helpful to do next. For instance, my 10yo has been struggling to improve his handwriting, so we've done lots of copying, but he's also at a stage where composing his own writing is beginning to come more easily, so we've taken a break from straight copywork and picked up a spelling workbook, where I've been making him do exercises, then take the words and write with them. I didn't really plan ahead to do that; I just re-discovered the spelling book on the shelf, and it seemed a good time to pull it out and do something with it. I was also observing that we needed to go over some basic rules for spelling!
So we'll do that until it gets old, and then we'll do something else. I also keep a log of what we do (at my Saint Daniel the Stylite blog), so that I can look back and see whether we need to tweak, add something in, or whatever.
So in one sense I don't plan much, but in another, I'm constantly planning!
Sally
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Willa
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UK Mum wrote:
| thank you for your thoughts, ladies. I think the thing i struggle with the most is, deciding on my plan *& sticking with it* LOL! There are soooo many wonderful idea's out there. so much i want to do with them. How do you you tailor your plans with differnt ages. I think, really, my question is more along the lines of 'how do you decide what it is you want to acheive for each child?' how do you not get swayed? |
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Perhaps it's a matter of terminology? I think a lot of the ladies whose creativity you admire don't MIND changing their focus from season to season. In fact, they build it into their system and use new seasons and months to reflect on changing priorities.
That doesn't have to mean chaos or switching curriculum every time a new thing comes out.
I am not really a creative homeschooler in the sense of arts and crafts and cool science projects but I've seen in my homeschool that it's actually easier to meet some of my goals for my children if I let them change within the framework of the big picture.
We probably all want the same thing for our children -- literacy, competence in basic subjects, a love for literature and for our Faith (not in that order  ), ability to take responsibility in adult life -- but no doubt the ways of going about that will be different not only from home to home but from year to year.
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Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
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stefoodie
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One tip on planning that has helped me this year. I picked ONE BOOK per subject (per child, if need be; i.e., each child has his/her own Math program, but only one spine for History, Science, Latin, and trying to do this for Religion too) that would be "the basic book".
I too tend to get sidetracked with all the wonderful ideas floating around and I'm one of those people that can research and plan to death, and then fail on the "doing" portion of it. The basic books I keep in "Mom's basket", and we try to do those first thing, one after the other. Otherwise I'll be off on my rabbit trails, etc. and by the end of the day feel like we didn't accomplish anything.
Anyway, I do my planning as we finish off goals/unit studies/plans. e.g., when a child is 3/4 done with a book or project, it's time to start planning again. Which makes me a perpetual planner, because they're always in different stages of accomplishment.
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Willa
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stefoodie wrote:
Anyway, I do my planning as we finish off goals/unit studies/plans. e.g., when a child is 3/4 done with a book or project, it's time to start planning again. Which makes me a perpetual planner, because they're always in different stages of accomplishment. |
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That seems like a nice way to space out planning, too -- so you don't have to do it all at once.
One concrete thing I have been doing is a variation of Leonie's idea of jotting down "someday/maybe" ideas. Whenever I think of a new idea or come across a book or activity I'd like to try, I note it down on an index card. Then I shuffle through the cards about once a week and choose a few I want to focus on planning for.
This keeps me from being overwhelmed by ALL the neat things I am not doing. If I pick out something I'm really not into that week, I can substitute something else -- no pressure. But it does help me weed through all the wonderful things I COULD be doing.
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Willa
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Take Up and Read
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SimplyMom
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I love planning. Implementation sometimes trips me up but planning is fun.
I usually have three planning "phases" for our education. In June we plan the subjects and spines for each person. In August we lay out the general scope and in January we reevaluate and make changes for the spring and summer.
Weekly, Sunday afternoon is my planning time for the week and daily I have a short planning session as part of my morning routine.
-D
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UK Mum
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Janet, I am exhausted simply reading about the flea situation...phew! Willa, the index card idea is genius! there *are* so many wonderful ideas floating around.to pin them down in one place is a great thought :)
I have spent the last few days mulling over these ideas & getting down on paper our rocks, as Sarah M described them. I then wrote out on a A4 sheet how to plan...what i need to do monthly, weekly, etc. This has lifted a huge weight from my mind! & simplifying our circle time...keepning to the same hymn, song, poem etc for 1 month has liberated me...it feels less 'bitty' plus, I think the girls will gain so much more from it than soemthing that changes weekly.
Thank you again, these ideas have been so very helpful
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