I found a great deal on some Mead dated weekly planners on clearance at walmart, they have one week per two page spread and have the time of day(in hours) printed on each day as well, a great way I thought to train my son in the habit of accounting for his school work, problem is they are all 2009 planners at a cost of $5 each, is it worth the time to alter them to fit each new year, the days would have to be marked out and written back in and some of the days with the times of the day would fall on the weekend days which have no time of day but has space to write it in(ok that sounded a little confusing but you get the jest of it right?) I'm not sure if you can find these or something similar at that price in the current year but these couldn't be more perfect for what we need just the outdated year is something to think about and wondered about your thoughts on it. oh and one other that was pretty cool was it gives the countdown to day 365 with each day like this: 035/330 week 6 and so on.... :001_smile:

I am "attempting" to plan my year out for the first time ever and I have a long range goal for my son with MUS but don't know how to get started, Can you help? Here's the run down, we are schooling year round but probably 6 weeks on 1 week off and we are using MUS Gamma this year with 30 lessons but heres where I'm not sure how to handle this. looking at long range plans l really wanted him to go MUS all the way to trigonometry, that is 8 books away ok we only have 5 years left to school, would it be impossible to fit a total of 9 books in 5 years I assume each book has 30 lessons,Gamma does. Also schooling year round is something new for us so I don't having anythng set in stone yet. Could this goal get accomplished some how without being to much strain on him ? So how do I start?

So can someone help me get started with my math plan? here's the run down, we are schooling year round but probably 6 weeks on 1 week off and we are using MUS Gamma this year with 30 lessons but heres where I'm not sure how to handle this. looking at long range plans l really wanted him to go MUS all the way to trigonometry, that is 8 books away ok we only have 5 years left to school, would it be impossible to fit a total of 9 books in 5 years I assume each book has 30 lessons,Gamma does. Also schooling year round is something new for us so I don't having anythng set in stone yet. Could this goal get accomplished some how without being to much strain on him ?

Connie, I went back to the site and I copied and pasted this for you http://www.wtmboards.com/K8currJan032008/ I hope I did that right, it was on the k-8 board a little more than halfway down you'll start to see momof7 popping up and that's where I found the thread. I hope this will get you there.

I don't think this explanation came out the way I wanted it to. when you sit down to plan your goals for the year or week , ok wait I can sit down and write up the books we will be using , chapters and extras but the goals for him would be....not sure? Can any of you provide goals you placed for you kiddos in the big scheme of things so I can have a look.

I do have an older edition of WTM and I think the planning stages for me that are difficult are trying to determine What goals need to be meet for my son for this year, you think I would know this but I don't. I just have to sit down and start working on some sort of plan and see where that takes me. That planning thread in the old forum from momof7 was in the general forum towards the bottom , that's the best I can do for you, you'll see her name sprinkled through. Maybe someone else can try to hook you up.

I was searching through some threads this morning and ran across one about momof7 and her planning system on the old forum, although I didn't find what I would consider a "system" I could latch onto I did get it and I found it very enlightening. I have been homeschooling my son who is 13 for four yrs now, this is the only child I've homeschooled and it has been trial and error and mostly error on my part. Each day we have flown by the seat of our pants just going through the motions and getting it done so we can have the rest of the day off..yipeeee. Ya that's us. I see now the importance of planning for more educational value and to make it more interesting, although I'm still not sure how I'm going to do this, I can see my son is not where he should be in some subjects,this is were I see implementing some goals and planning would come into play, and this will be a feat in itself for me, I am not a well organized person , I wish it had come naturally for me but it surly does not. I am so utterly indecisive as well so that makes matters even worse and I get so distracted from phone calls and being on the pc to long.(Like now)I think I have faith in myself that I can do it but I think It will feel like I'm rowing upstream. What I think I will do first is start simple and build from there , boy I hope this works.(What A bumpy ride this is gonna be). I love reading the posts from all you moms that have it so together and know what your goals and plans are for each child. I long for the day I can feel accomplished in our own homeschool endeavers as well. Cheers to you all. ~Silverundertones.

Funny, I just asked him what his favorite subject was, his response "nothing". WHatttttttttt......wait.. back up a minute here, Jiminy crickets, whats a mom to do.Ok there are So many great ideas here. I don't feel adequate enough to structure our own schooling around something he likes since it apparantly isn't anything, boy I wish I did though. I stand corrected he informed me he likes nature study when we are collecting samples or are outside,( no reading though) brings back memories for me, ahhhh..... ohhhhh nooooo. Maybe to if I could just get him to have a different mindset about schooling,I mean he has to know that school has to be done just like other things that we don't always like to do. Gosh that sounds horrible, that I have to make him do school and it's something he doesn't like but school is school everybody has to do it. Really I don't have to make him do it he just has a routine each day and does it no complaints. This would be so easy if he loved reading. He asked me a bit ago how much reading this new plan of mine required, was it less than AO he asked. Oh dear, well shoot. Maybe this totally falls on me, I got so burnt out on the readings from Ao long ago that I just stopped doing them and left it up to him, I got very distant from it, barely there and very distracted, how it happened I would attribute to just plain boredom. this is my first and only homeschooled child, I'm not seasoned very well, please somebody pass the salt and pepper. Maybe I should just sit down, start over and rethink getting him more interested by reading with him, to him , audios and the like and showing a keener interest in it, a little secret is that I found homeschooling the way we are doing it to be so monotonous, oh lord I said it, BORING, BORING, BORING. I've heard of some homeschool parents that do all sorts of things to make it more interesting but finances are also an issue with only one income., my biggest fear he will one day say he hated being homeschooled, ouch. Well I'm going to keep my head up and keep pressing on, with lots of ideas here to think about and surely more to come, something will work for us and WTM seems like a good one with just some adjustments and different frame of mind we will figure it out... I hope. I'd climb over MT. Everest if it got in my way. My son picked the song out "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus just for me and my determination.;) You guys are awesome, maybe see you tommorow. ~Silverundertones~

I did speak to him about my new plans and his thoughts on it , He gave me the thumbs up. he was burnt out a while back I just didn't see it till now. When I was younger you couldn't get me to crack open a book, but I lived on a farm and just wanted to be outside always, he just gets it from me.

Hugs to you guys for posting, I was getting scared no one would answer me. I'm glad to be at the end of AO so that I can feel comfortable changing course. I think biographies/autobiographies would work great for him with some classics sprinkled in.I also would like to use A History of US, which I already have. Joanne just one bitty question what does "using original sources" mean? Would you have a suggestion on where to really place/start him, I'm thinking 8th but some of these techniques are new to us like outlining for instance and I don't think he's got a strong grasp of history. I tried to run through the list from Ancients to modern in the book and he doesn't recognize many names.This is where I need to start looking for biographies. ( I sorta feel like I'm jumping in midstream kinda lost.) I'm looking for the Kingfisher book right now so we can get started soon.I looked ahead at high school (one year away) work and I don't think he's near ready for what I saw there it looked pretty intensive, but high school is "technically" one year away for him. . he's got 5 years of school left if we back up to learn these new skills/areas wouldn't that be intruding on his high school years in this classical method? I don't want to start to far back but I'd like for him to have an enriched understanding of history and the people. I'm sorry I know I sound stressed about this,it always sounds like everyone else knows what they are doing but me. :tongue_smilie:, arggg! ~silverundertones~

Hello, I'm new here and need some advice, I'm so very frustrated but am hoping this is where I need to be. I just recently ran across the Classical method of education and am interested to know if you think this style might work better for us then what We have been using, Ambleside/CM it seems to be alike on some things . Although I personally love the concept of CM,it seems my son, he's 13, does not and is not getting the education he needs, He is not a reader and boy have I tried we've muttled through for 3 years now and why I'm just now seeing it not working befuddles me. I was just so in love with CM's style I did'nt want to give it up even though it was not working for him butmore for me. So here we are at a turning point and a change is greatly needed . In our discussion this morning we had about some of this I deducted this from him: He likes researching and writing, He doesn't like reading stories but rather more interesting fact filled books, He's not really even interested in the classics, but reading is so important and it could be the amount of reading that is required in our current method(AO)I might as well handed a non -reader a million books to read in his eyes, and he dutifully read them, well not exactly.but still it has taken it's toll and has bored him to tears also I believe in his frustration and overwhelmed state, he's not remembering much .. I ran across The Well Trained Mind(Old version) on my bookshelf believe it or not that I had forgotten about, so I have been pouring through it with some excitement. I like the idea of Kingfisher History book and outlining and many other teaching methods here,seems like this would be right up his ally, I do realize that reading is just something he will have to do for his own learning success and I hope to get some advice from those of you who may or may not have ran across these sort of issues and used the Classical method and succeeded. Any advice, direction,imput , encouragement, just anything would be incredibly helpful. Thanks for your patients in reading this and have an awesome day. ~Silverundertones