For those who plan months ahead...

[bugs]

Do you find yourself looking at your plan when the week comes around and wondering why you chose to have your dc complete one task or another?

 

I am finding myself looking at some of my HST+ plans and asking "why?" It made sense when I put it together back in Jul/Aug. I feel frustrated wondering why I bothered working ahead of time if the plan doesn't make sense. I am not frustrated enough to throw out all the work because I do have my weekends (where last year I didn't).

 

Sorry I'm rambling. If anyone has suggestions on how to keep track of the "whys" in planning (esp. if you have HST+) I'd appreciate it.

[8filltheheart]

Occassionally I have to modify my plans if they aren't working. But, for the most part, I know my kids' abilities and paces well enough that I am fairly on target with my planning.

 

I do not plan "months" at a time however. I plan 6-7 weeks b/c I have found that is the longest range I can plan accurately.

[2cents]

In the early years of hsing I felt some of that but after so many years, I think I've just gotten pretty good at scheduling better. The past several years we've managed to keep everything going smoothly and we get it all done. In the long run it does get easier. :)

[dcjlkplus3]

Everything I have is for a whole year, so I can usually see where and why I was going with the plans I made.

Good luck!

[Matryoshka]

I've just gotten HST+ and am busily entering stuff now - even though this was technically our first week (though we only started on half-steam).

 

I'm not sure how you're using HST (or honestly if what I'm doing is "right"), but what I'm doing is just entering a Lesson Plan for each resource, and then I'm planning on assigning stuff weekly at most monthly. I have an "LP Schedule" set up for the fall that I'll filter some stuff through; I'm using the Weekly Planner for some other stuff. But the upshot is that since the LPs themselves are all single-threaded, and I'm not assigning them till shortly before we get there, if I decided to stop using a book or resource or part of it even, I could just not assign those to the grid when the time comes. I'm still just "doing the next thing" with just about everything, but this helps me see how the heck I'm going to fit it all in.

 

If you're talking more philosophically than logistically, there's places in HST to enter "Goals" - both overarching goals and then how each thing you're doing relates or furthers those goals. I have to admit that all those fields are completely blank in my copy right now, and probably will be for the forseeable future - but if you're looking back and thinking "why did I choose this" rather than "ack I decided to do two pages a day instead of three" (not sure which "why" you were wondering about), then that might be a good field to use.

[Heather in OK]

I used to. That's when I stopped planning long-term for most subjects. The only ones I plan out are history, science, geography, and art. And I only do that so I can be prepared for materials and library books.