Whatever you'd call it. Let's just go with January, '07. There, that sounds right. I haven't quite figured out where our school years end and pick back up again. We don't break the boys' studies into yearly chunks for progression. They work until they're done, then we move on to the next book.
This method works great on paper, but it does make things a bit wonky with scheduling (which I do in abundance, and then promptly set aside once our normal routine emerges, rendering all the scheduling irrelevent). I don't do the scheduling for them, though. I do it for me. For several reasons: even if I do ditch it, the planning gives me a general idea which direction we need to be heading; it helps clarify which books are gathering dust and which need to be beefed up a bit; I enjoy it. It's fun. Even more fun now that we've found the electric pencil sharpener. Mmmm. I do love a freshly sharpened pencil and a blank sheet of paper. WOOHOO!
For daily scheduling, I use the auto-fill daily homework sheet from Chart Jungle. Ten minutes in the evening before bed gives me a leg up on the next day's plan. Think of it this way, if you need to be somewhere in the morning, and you *know* your car battery is going to be dead in the morning, wouldn't you plug in the charger before you went to bed? (Assuming, of course, that you all have chargers, and not just jumper cables, like normal people, right?) So. My battery isn't good with quick starts. We like the daily forms.
The rest of my planning, I do with Donna Young's Quarterly Planners. Just a general outline, in 9 week increments. As I pointed out to the boys, it's paper, not stone. But those wonderful grids make me happy! The boys don't ever have to see them - the pages go into a binder.
A happy, gridded, filled-in, organized binder of glee.
My glee is bound. My pages are printed. My schedule is in place.
The kids are asleep. The menu is written up.
And... we just found out Zorak's off work tomorrow. :-D (The humor being that we usually take off school when Daddy's home. It's easier on everyone. All that work, when I could have gone to bed early!)
G'nite!
Kiss those babies!
~Dy
4 comments:
We don't school when Daddy's home either. He's too much of a distraction! This is his third week of leave, so we've been off awhile, but all will be back to normal next week. :)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a thing for sharp pencils, nice & neat grid lines, and blank paper. :-) I've been feeling the need for some R&R with these joy-producing tools, but I haven't had time to fit it in. Perhaps after we're back from our trip this weekend...
We don't do school either when Matt is around, it just gets too distracting. We started back to lessons yesterday because Matt decided to work on New Year's and take the time off later this week.
Yeah, try doing school when your husband is home most days...lol We like to do night schooling. ;-)
I'm so glad things are ready and organized, it's a great feeling!
I now know what it feels like to sit down and plan everything out for our lessons. I am so right there with you. I have this huge sense of accomplishment and I'm also beginning to wonder why I haven't taken the time to do this before. My dd10 has been asking me to print up a schedule for her as well. She was so happy when she found her copy sitting on her desk this evening. It feels good to know that we have goals set in place and a general direction to head for.
I'm really looking forward to this year and I hope to make lesson planning a habit!
David took his vacation last month and was home for 25 days. Although we accomplished a great deal during that time, it really had nothing to do with academics. It was nice having him home but such a distraction.
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