Schedules/Lesson Plans - Putting it all together

[mmasmommy]

This is our first year homeschooling. I originally believed I needed a boxed curriculum but after a lot of research and some trial and error over the summer I've realized that that's the last thing my kids need. I now have most of the books I want to cover for each subject but I'm not sure how to go about putting it all together. For my sanity I need a plan, a schedule, or at the very least a weekly guideline.

 

What do you do daily? My thought is History, LA, Reading, and Math. How often do you do things like Science, Geography, Crafts, Music, etc. How far in advance do you plan? I would love to be able to plan the whole year but I think that would be a giant waste of time. Who knows what will strike the kids and they will want to learn more about, right? I'm really struggling with how to make it all flow and would love to hear any advice or suggestions.

 

Thanks!

[Pata]

We do math, la, reading/read-alouds, history and science daily for 4 days. Then on fridays we play math games, have a spelling test, play some sort of word game (ie. scrabble, banana-grams), read, do a history project, do our experiment, and have art/music time. This has worked out well for us.

 

As for planning, some of the material we use have plans already, so that's easy to figure out. Those that don't, I do plan out what I want to cover for the year by week (ie. week 8-SOTW 3 Ch. 9 &10, Read-Aloud: Witch of Blackbird Pond, reader-The Bears on Hemlock Mountain). Then the weekend before week 8 begins, I'll get out my schedule template and fill in the weeks work. That's when I break down my broad schedule into daily chunks (ie. Monday SOTW 3-Ch.9 plus narrate & map, Witch of Blackbird Pond-read Ch. 15, reader-The Bears on Hemlock Mountain-read Ch. 1 &2). Hopefully that makes sense. You can see some of the scheduling templates I've made at my yahoo group (link in my siggy) or you could use the ones from Donna Young. Hope that helps!

Edited July 26, 2010 by Pata
woops

[Heather in OK]

We do a four day school week. Our day looks something like this:

 

Bible Study - daily

Latin - M, W, Th; Word Roots T

History - daily

Poetry - T, W, Th

Science - daily

quiet reading

lunch

Individual Work (i.e. Math, LA, Reading Comp, Vocab.) - daily

 

I do long-term planning for History and Science only. That way I can see what library books and materials we will be needing so I can be ready. I try to stick to my plans for these two subjects.

 

For Latin and Poetry I do plan it out some but we have a little more flexibility with that.

 

I do not plan long-term for their individual work. As they do assignments and I grade tests I see how they are doing. If I see assignments and/or tests where something needs to be retaught, then we slow down and master it. If they are ready to move ahead, we do.

 

And I should add....this daily schedule took me a couple years to refine and make work for us. I haven't been doing a schedule like this for all seven years. It's been just in the last two years that I've used this and I tweak it as we go along.

Edited July 27, 2010 by Heather in OK

[Deb in NZ]

I like to look at each subject & divide what I plan to finish for the year into 4 to give myself goals for each term. Then I divide each term into the number of weeks (10 for us) to give me a weekly "assignment." Looking at that I can usually see how often I need to touch on that subject to get where I want us to be by the end of the year.

 

In the early years (ages 5-10/11) I like to do core subjects (maths, reading / phonics, & writing) daily for short periods with content subjects (history, science, geography, fine arts, etc.) touched on weekly for longer blocks of time. Crafts are part of our projects in the content subjects.

 

Age 12+ our daily subjects are maths, science, Latin (including grammar), & spelling. Writing is part of science, history, literature, etc. I try to alternate a heavy, longer subject followed by a lighter, shorter subject (i.e. MUS > copywork > LoF > roots > NZ maths > spelling > Latin > geography > Japanese > science

 

I group subject that can be completed independently for the most part together & our "teacher" subjects together. When I was teaching 3dc I would save our "family" subjects for after lunch. Subject such as typing / copywork / tech drawing / roots get covered 2-3 times a week. While core subjects such as maths get covered daily, possibly more than once daily.

 

In the past I have reworked our weekly timetable each term to reflect our changing extracurriculia activities. This year (our 9th HSing) I decided to print our ds#2's year's work & bind it into a assignment book before we began. This has had amazing results as he is on schedule & even when "life" has happended, school seems to keep rolling along as all the organizing is done & I don't need to think about what we need to do this week. I can deal with "life." (Before the year begins I am excited about planning ;) By the end of term 1, I am tired. By the end of term 2, I need a break. Term 3 seems to always be crazy & its wet & dreary here. By term 4 I just want school DONE. So planning it all out when I am in a very positive mood, has made for a great year so far :) )

 

For your first year---Enjoy your kids. Do some maths, reading, & writing daily. Do LOTS of reading aloud. Take many nature walks. Cook cookies, have picnics, go to the movies on a mid-week morning, do school at the beach when its nice, celebrate learning as a family all the time. If you have a rough plan of where you want to be every quarter, you'll find you have freedom to add in the extras spontaniously. DON'T try to make your HS look like PS. Enjoy the benefits of learning at home.

 

Blessings,