This is the time of year that many homeschooling moms (and the occasional dad) are crazy-busy in trying to plan out the next school year and get everyone on track. Along our own journey, we’ve fallen into a routine of planning that works quite well for us, even the forgetful members of our family.
The first thing I do is to start early and go slowly. We like to jump into the book-learning around the same time everyone else goes back to school, so about a month before that, I start thinking about the planning and making some lists for myself. I write down as much as possible because I know if I don’t I’ll either forget it or spend so much time thinking about it and trying to remember, that I’ll forget something else.
Since it is all about the children, I snag each one from their busy lives of summer relaxation, and sit each one down so we can go over things. I do them each on separate days, sometimes separate weeks. One thing we talk about is the last year’s work. Of course, I have a list of what we did from last time, so I can refer back to it now. Each child will tell me how they liked or didn’t like this or that book, or what aspects worked for them. Sometimes we will find that they liked a particular book, but didn’t like the associated questions to answer. So this is where we can diverge: it’s not necessary to answer the questions in the book. Often I have found each child heartily enjoyed reading the text, even of their own volition (that is, they picked the book, not me) but as soon as I said, “Let’s answer the questions and count it for school†the fun was gone. Usually a short discussion of the book was enough to assure me they knew it.
If you really must keep track of work done, due to state or provincial guidelines, instead of doing the canned questions, your child may be more interested in writing an overview of what they have read. You can call it a book report, synopsis or a report on the topic they’ve been reading about. (Like History, for example)
After discussing the school-type books and things we did, I have them write down a list of things they are interested in. These can be hobbies, subjects, topics, silly things, stuff they want to know more about, anything that comes to mind that they like.
This gives us enough of a jumping-off point for the first part of our year. We can use this list to give each child an idea of things they can do every day. The resources are already available, for the most part, and since the kids are older, any topic that needs resource-gathering doesn’t have to be done immediately. If additional resources are needed, I have the child in question brainstorm the kinds of resources they would like to use. This assures that my time is not wasted gathering things they won’t use, and it doesn’t frustrate the child to have resources they don’t like or have a hard time working with.
The real key here is we don’t plan the whole year at once. It’s just too much to do and causes frustration all around. Somewhere around mid-October, when our family also has a rash of birthdays, we take another break to re-group and do further planning. Again, we go over what worked and what didn’t. This way, we can make better adjustments for leaning styles and methods. We have a long break around Christmas, a break in March, and we start winding things down in May. These breaks are also not cast in stone or on particular dates. We all have a rhythm to our lives – all I’ve done is noted it so I can work with it instead of against it.
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