We are about 1/2 way through the school year and I’m feeling overwhelmed w/ the “planning” part of it. I’ll be teaching 2 kids next year and 3 the following so am wondering how I can mainstream my planning. Although “planning” is my concern, I am NOT a type A person and even paid $28 for a great homeschool planner last year to only use it 1 week w/o stressing out just looking at it
My 1st grader uses Abeka reading/phonics and Math-U-See plus a variety of other small subjects (money, time, writing, reading comprehension) and if I don’t figure out what she’s doing before each day our days go so poorly! Right now I do 1 week planning at a time but find it overwhelming (especially since Abeka has things so spread out in their teacher’s guides) so I was trying to see if other moms do their lesson planning, I welcome any feedback, suggestions, tips, etc.! (especially related to Abeka).
Thank you!!!
I used A Beka for K5 with my oldest and then also for 1st and 2nd grades. I read all of the teacher’s guides during K5 and followed it always. For the following grades I no longer used the TG. With other little ones around I simply found it too much. I didn’t want to miss anything or not do a thorough job and asked a friend of mine who has used and still uses A Beka for the elementary years to see if I really needed the guides. She said no. I thought well she’s a bit more relaxed than I am so I don’t want to do that but it turned out I really didn’t need it and I did not even owned them. So my daughter learned everything really well. Each student page has all of the instructions and boxes on them with the teaching necessary. I just read to her that and what she needed to do. If she didn’t understand it I’d just explain it to her until she did. It was simple. However, we did all A Beka, including arithmetic and everything else. I just went from one workbook to the next.
With the addition of the younger children into Homeschool as well I had to find something less demanding of me and simpler. I have found what works for us, thankfully. I loved A Beka, and I still get their readers, history, science and health just in addition to our other curriculum and other books because my 4th grader loves to read for fun and those books are good!
I hope you find the balance you need to make it all work out for you! You will!
The other thing is that I quit planning ahead for each week and day. I have the subjects listed for each day of the week that needs done so we can finish by the end of the year but other than that I don’t plan lesson numbers out anymore. Simply open up where we stopped and go at it. I made a schedule of the subjects for each day for her and she checks them off one by one. She even added some of her own subjects.
I am using A Beka with my three kids (1st, 4th, and 5th grade). I think it is impossible to do every thing listed in the teacher Manuals. I don’t use a planner. What I do is to check the TM the night before, then I mark or highlight the things we need to practice, and prepare the materiales we will be using (flash cards, charts, etc). I concentrate in the new concepts, and choose just one or two activities for reviewing. Since A Beka has a lot of repetition in their lessons, you can skip the things your daughter has mastered.
I also use the calendar included in the Teacher manual to write the lesson we will be doing every day and a schedule similar to @GC123’s. I use an assignment sheet for my older kids, but with my first grader we work mostly 1:1.
Hope this helps!
I have a post on creating lesson plans for our kiddos here:
I have to say for first grade though, I don’t do anything too detailed in terms of planning though. I mostly just pull out the worksheets as needed each day. She does participate in our group science, history, and art stuff too so she get’s to do fun things as well. You can see what she’s doing this year here:
For our state we don’t have to keep daily lesson plans, so you might even be able to skip that part right now. But we do have to track hours and attendance for anyone 6 years of age and up. So you’ll want to see what you need for your state requirements. I do lesson plans for all of my kids because there are 4 of them and that just helps me make sure that we’re getting everything done. But if she’s your only one in school right now you probably don’t need to stress out so much over having a lesson plan. Especially if you’re just pulling out the next day’s worksheets from Abeka and MUS
