I’ve never heard of that- “Sabbath Homeschooling” with 6 weeks on, one week off. What a neat idea!
1 Like
I have not mastered planning, always trying new ways. So far the best is getting everything in order the night before and having it all laid out.
My son is young so right now I’m able to get away with weekly planning but I’m hoping to start planning out a year in advance so that I have a good system setup for me to follow as well as tracking certain goals for him.
I have a special needs kiddo. I took Donna Youngs’s suggestion of planning the subject out for the year but only scheduling the actual week in my paper planner in pencil for only one week at a time. It works well if you have a struggling learner. You can park on a concept in one subject while moving forward in another. It takes about 10 min of planning on Sunday to get everything written in and set up for the week. This method also works well for the newbie homeschooler because you can ditch a particular curriculum if you or your child hates it and you won’t have to redo an entire planner!
1 Like
I plan for the year, but I don’t create “daily lesson plans.”
My daily plan is how much time I want to spend (approximately–not an exact clock-watcher!) per subject. Subjects that break down easily into lessons or a chapter per day, we do that. (For example, Math, or a history curriculum that has lessons and activities for the week). But a lot of what I do is literature-based, and I’ve found that extensive daily plans are overwhelming to create, hard to pace, and create stress if we get “behind.” Instead, I create a yearly plan of the approximate week I think we’ll start each book. I have an optional list of books to add in if we should get ahead (doesn’t happen often, but occasionally!). If we get behind, I can cross a book off of the yearly list and easily be back on track. I used to use Sonlight, and they included a yearly plan in their IG–I found I liked it better than the daily guide and eventually ended up making my own yearly plan.
This post on how I organize my teacher binder shows more information.
Before I get to that point, I like to think through our priorities and passions for the next year and do some-pre-planning, to know what we should focus on.
2 Likes
Donna Young has so many great tools on her website too! Really great site. I do the yearly plan, but my daily plan is often based on time or a lesson if something easily divides into lessons. I use my weekly plan more like a journal–I write in what we did each day instead of writing it out ahead of time. I use workboxes so we all have the expectation that we’ll do the next lesson, or spend X minutes (an hour, now that they are in high school) per subject–but it’s flexible as far as how far we get in subjects.
1 Like
Can you share how he did this? On Ical? Thanks!
He just did the lesson plan on excel and uploaded it to Dropbox (a program we use to save all our pics and important files), then I open it on my iPad and upload it to docs to go. That program allows me to makes changes if needed.
We used this schedule this past school year and really liked it. I plan on using it again. Like she mentioned, we were usually ready for a break. We could do the “fun” educational things and not feel like we were getting behind.
Which online planner do you use? Trying to decide on one. Thanks!
Does anyone know a planner that can be for homeschool, home & business all at the same time??