How Do You Plan & Prepare?

[Mystie]

I am beginning my third year of planning, preparing, and printing all the next school year's stuff at once.

 

Anyone else do it all at once? I just haven't been able to make a weekly "teacher's prep" time work out regularly, and I find that if I don't have our papers ready-to-roll, I lose students when I go to pull or print what they need.

 

How do you do your lesson/plan/materials preparation?

[TXMary2]

I am beginning my third year of planning, preparing, and printing all the next school year's stuff at once.

 

Anyone else do it all at once? I just haven't been able to make a weekly "teacher's prep" time work out regularly, and I find that if I don't have our papers ready-to-roll, I lose students when I go to pull or print what they need.

 

How do you do your lesson/plan/materials preparation?

 

Ideally, I like planning the whole year at once. I have done that several years, but this year it didn't work out and I have been planning quarterly.

[Colleen]

How do you do your lesson/plan/materials preparation?

 

I've been at this many years, but have never needed to do much in the way of prep. Most of what I use is a simple matter of open-and-go. I have no interest in creating lesson plans and so on. I voted "other", btw.

[KathyBC]

I answered 'other' because 'all of the above' was not available. :D

 

 

At the end of the year, I plan the next year in broad strokes, choosing what materials to use, ordering them, planning which semesters we'll cover which science topics, making lists of novels for history, etc. It often gets tweaked over the summer.

 

Between terms, it's time to assess where we're at, tie up any obvious loose ends if possible, notice what might need tweaking now or next year.

 

I have in some years sat down weekly, usually on Sunday evening, and planned out the following week in specific detail. Currently, it feels more like we're winging it, with any copying and printing done the evening before or in the morning while kids are eating breakfast or doing chores.

[ALB]

I plan in chunks, depending on when we reach a natural stopping point. I also plan weekly, mostly for things like LA and math. I can't plan those subjects far ahead because I don't know for sure how much we'll get done each week or when we need to pause for extra review.

[momofsbandeg]

I've been at this many years, but have never needed to do much in the way of prep. Most of what I use is a simple matter of open-and-go. I have no interest in creating lesson plans and so on. I voted "other", btw.

 

What you use for your different curriculum.....sounds like the way I would like to do things.

[----]

.

[JudoMom]

I sit down and make a master plan at the beginning of the year. Even though much of our stuff is open and go, I still have to have it written down or it doesn't get done.

 

At Christmas break, I check the master plan and rework if needed (I'm often very ambitious when I'm planning during the summer).

 

Weekly, I transfer the plans from the master plan to the boys' weekly assignment books.

 

I make about 6 weeks of copies at a time, and I put a sticky note on the page about 5 days before they run out. They bring me the sticky note (which tells me what to copy and where to start copying), and I run about another 6 weeks of copies when I get a minute.

[Ecclecticmum]

I have learnt to deal with the type of personality/brain I have. I tend to have spurts where I get into something, then I am "really" into it. I am passion driven. This means although I usually work on 1 thing at a time, although I can "juggle" daily things, there is always one particular hobby that drives me, and I love planning. I put past my full self into it. i.e. 110%

 

So for me the best thing to do is just to focus that drive on planning, so I do everything at the beginning of the year: make lists, purchase, plan, plan, plan, organize, etc. I have the similar thing to "nesting" modes for my hobbies, I run round in a frenzy all excited.

 

I usually apply this to housekeeping too. One day the house will look like a tornado ran through it, and the next everythings sparkling (And I'm usually asleep for the next 24hours LOL, but thats a whole other story :lol: )

 

I am trying an experiment this year of purchasing all the non-perishable supplies needed for the entire year, just to see the difference. Last year I purchase supplies (not books, I mean stuff like paper plates, salt, blah, all the stuff for experiments & crafts etc) every 6-8 weeks, so I'll see how I go this year and whether its worth getting absolutely everything right at the beginning.

[MrsBear]

I chose two - all at once, then weekly. What I do is lay out the year, by subject.

 

Within each subject I lay out what needs to be done, reading to include, etc. from start to finish. I look for and note various documentaries, audio books and other media to include where appropriate also. Where a field trip is appropriate, I'll note that too. I do this by subject, rather than month or week, since it leaves the plans open and flexible, so that if we're moving faster in one subject and slower in another, I haven't set up things where just moving along becomes a problem.

 

On a weekly basis, I will lay out our coming week with a bit more than I think we can finish. That's usually on a single sheet, day-by-day, with all lessons to do in the various subjects for the week. That I print and keep with my record book so I can record what we got done as we go along in the week.

 

At the end of the week anything we didn't finish is added onto the next week, then more from the main year-long document rounds out the week. I do this week by week and coming up on the end of our year, we're usually done earlier than I planned. This year I had our end-date target to be June 15, to give DS a couple of weeks off before we start up again on July 2. Right now it looks like we'll be done with everything planned around May 11. Rather than stop and wait, we're going to be going away on a big roadtrip vacation, so we'll continue with basics like reading and math, and then when we're back I'll give DS a couple of weeks off as planned and continue along where we left off and do our light schedule for the summer months.

 

Since we're going to be ending earlier than I planned, I'm now working on next year's schedule since I will need something ready in mid-June.

[Ohmomjacquie]

Right now its weeky. I pull worksheets.for the week and check for supplies I need on Sunday. For next year I'm working on planning the whole year. We are using mfw so most is ready to go. I will print math stuff for the year all at once. As. The year goes on I check our progress with where we are time wise.

[Tanikit]

I don't do much planning because at my daughter's age I cannot possibly predict where she will be for a whole year - I also prefer things (for example like the complete writer) which can span multiple grades so I know where I should be heading and can just go at her pace. About once a month to every two months I may buy something new for use in homeschool (these are usually just some books for reading, but if things are going fine and I think she needs a new thing introduced then I will buy that too. I do try to come back to things that haven't seemed to work when bought as very often a bit of a break from them and a bit of thought on my part can make them work later on (unless she has moved beyond them already)

[Gisele Marie]

I take several days (homeschool retreat) and research/order and then make a master 180 daily plan (omitting dates of execution). I then print off weekly charts as we go-marking off days from the master plan. This has served us for years. :)

[Mrs Twain]

I am beginning my third year of planning, preparing, and printing all the next school year's stuff at once.

 

Anyone else do it all at once? I just haven't been able to make a weekly "teacher's prep" time work out regularly, and I find that if I don't have our papers ready-to-roll, I lose students when I go to pull or print what they need.

 

How do you do your lesson/plan/materials preparation?

 

I do my planning exactly the same as you. It has been one of the best decisions for our homeschool because our day runs smoothly when everything is ready.

 

I used to try a weekly planning session, but it never worked for me and I would end up having to prepare things the day of the lesson. Like you said, time would be wasted and my students would wander off if I needed to go and prepare or print something during school.

[mom31257]

I plan during the summer because we follow the local school schedule. My husband is a school teacher. For my younger child, I file for the entire year. He has more workbooks and things I can take apart than my high school aged daughter. For her, I make spreadsheets for each semester, listing Monday dates down the left and subjects across the top. I fill in lesson numbers, chapter numbers, unit lesson plans, anything I can use to identify which part of a curricula she should be doing in any given week. I also make a spreadsheet for my son with subjects that I can't file.

 

Each weekend, I take out the spreadsheets and that week's folder for my son. I then quickly plan out the week.

[SilverMoon]

I voted for between terms and weekly. I do 6 weeks at a time for history, science, literature, CW, and others. The subjects that are "pick up and go" I plan out on a weekly basis. Those mostly need rearranged so one day isn't too heavy, but the speed my kids go through them tends to change so rapidly they're not worth planning out long term.

[edeemarie]

I make big term plans for the year, but then we do a weekly schedule for the details. I find there is less pressure to get things done that way and we can slow down if something becomes difficult or speed up if it is too easy without it throwing off the schedule.

[regentrude]

I voted "other"

I research materials throughout the year and, at the end of the summer, have pretty much all books we are going to use.

Beyond that, I do not "lesson plan". We work as far as we get, then we resume where we left off. I found that this works much better than scheduling, because this way we have the freedom to spend varying times on different subjects, depending on interest and mood.

[Miss Marple]

Wasn't sure how to respond so I said we wing it. But it's a little more complex than that :D I do planning for the next year all during the previous year. I research what we will be using and how we will structure the course. Then once I have all the materials, I use some sort of "scheduling" program (I like homeschoolskedtracker.com) and try to order out at least the first semester if not the whole year. Then during the year we tweak it because there are always things that happen.

[Walking-Iris]

I voted "other"

I research materials throughout the year and, at the end of the summer, have pretty much all books we are going to use.

Beyond that, I do not "lesson plan". We work as far as we get, then we resume where we left off. I found that this works much better than scheduling, because this way we have the freedom to spend varying times on different subjects, depending on interest and mood.

 

This sort of describes me. The poll does need an all of the above option. I'm researching and thinking about what I want to use all year long. I try to break it down by subject. What do I want to use for LangArts? Math?

 

Then as I'm getting materials/books ordered I try to look through them and mark/make notes in a journal how I want to divide up that workload.

 

I like to be pretty much done by the end of June. We just like to have July and most of August off. I also like to take Dec off and week in Spring (for me---to organize/clean the house.)

 

I also plan two terms. Some things I like to do in Sept-Dec and be done so we can pick up something new in Jan-May. June is usually tying up loose ends.

 

I also plan a little in the weekend for what we want to do during the week. Sometimes I sit down on Sunday afternoon and write out in a Daytimer 2 weeks in advance. Try to print off/make copies of what I want. ILL books a week in advance from the time I would want to read them. Go to the grocery for any materials I would need for science/art etc.

[*Michelle*]

We haven't been at this very long at all, but I'm pretty pleased with how my planning has gone.

 

Months prior to the new year, I start looking over materials and resources that I'm planning on using. We've been moving towards year-round schooling based on the liturgical year, so I come up with an outline of what our schooling periods and breaks will be based on that calendar. Once that's in place, I come up with a rough draft of how much of each material will need to be completed during each school session.

 

The month prior, I enter in the following month's lessons in Homeschool Tracker. This is when I incorporate events from our personal calendar (birthdays, minor holidays, known days that my husband will be off) and I also take a look at our community events calendar to see if anything is going that we would like to do. I don't go into any great detail with lesson planning; it's really just entering in what pages we should be doing and things like that.

 

Our school week runs Sunday through Saturday. On Friday or Saturday of the week prior, I look over the lessons I have planned for the upcoming week to make sure I have all needed materials. I keep a blog of our homeschool in anticipation of the time when we'll need to keep a portfolio of work to meet our school board requirements. I'll usually write a blog post in advance that details what lessons are going to be completed and set that up to post automatically on Sunday mornings.

 

Each morning, I bring up Homeschool Tracker to reference our lesson for the day and take a few minutes to make any copies or get needed materials out. After that, school happens when it happens. Like I said, we're very early on in our homeschool journey, so we average about an hour or so for sit-down school each day. That doesn't include read-alouds, or playing on Starfall, or things like that.

 

My whole goal is to have a well-structured plan so that I can have flexibility within it. If I don't know what's coming up (at least in a general way) in the next week or month or session, it would be difficult for me to know when it's okay relax and ease up some or spend extra time on things my son is really enjoying.

Edited April 14, 2012 by *Michelle*
Correcting the auto-correct

[julikins]

I voted that we wing it, but I do plan out how much we need to do in each subject per day at the beginning of the year, so I know how much to do each day to get done by a certain day at the end of the year. Then, it's pretty much open and go. This last year was one full of "interruptions" to our schedule and I did have to reorganize and throw some stuff out and try different things several times. But hopefully life will settle down a bit now and we can get things going more smoothly for next year. I'm just trying to hold on until the end of this semester and then we'll take a breath and start fresh next year. I'm excited about it!

[m0mmaBuck]

I used to wing it but now that DH and I share teaching responsibilities I plan weekly.

[chepyl]

I put all of our plans in edutrack last year. Then I just opened the program and checked it off as we got it done. If we ran out of time, I bumped a lesson....if we got ahead, I checked ot off ahead of time.

 

As DS gets older, I can print a weekly plan for him amd let him work independantly. Everything we use is open and go. I just put the lessons In and planned vacations so that everything got done. :)

[Amy Jo]

I voted yearly and per term. I try to get all the planning / ordering / printing done before the term starts. I usually end up redoing a bunch of stuff in January or February, and sometimes at other points. But I still like having everything printed out.

 

I'm trying to do more teacher prep now, pre-read chapters, note vocabulary and activities. We'll see how that goes. That will be weekly and monthly (we are going to do 3 weeks on, 1 week off, so I'll have time to plan).

[Lucy]

Most all of my curriculum is 'do the next thing.' Planning is a minimum. The only thing I do ahead is history. SOTW as my base, I copy all the maps and coloring sheets, find and copy all the activities and extras from other books, and look up all the movies I'm interested in and place them in my Q on Netflix. So, by the time I'm done, I have all the kids' binders ready to go, a master kids binder for the next time I go through it (so I can just copy it off), and a teacher's binder that has one sheet listing what we are doing for each chapter with all the supply lists and movies and lapbook stuff and extras already copied out of all the random books. It takes me about two to three days, but it's TOTALLY worth it because it makes history a 'do the next thing' curriculum. I would do the same for science, but we go to a co-op for that!

[meggie]

I voted yearly and weekly. Yearly I order the books and supplies, print out the entire PDF pages, get bindings chopped, get TMs spiral bound, organize everything, etc.

 

Every week, I put each day's work in a file folder. I write down the lesson plans in a teacher's lesson plan notebook. As we finish things, I use a highlighter to cross them off (so I can still see what we did). I put his completed work in another file folder and at the end of the week, I file those pages in a 3" 3 ring binder.

[Aspasia]

I have learnt to deal with the type of personality/brain I have. I tend to have spurts where I get into something, then I am "really" into it. I am passion driven. This means although I usually work on 1 thing at a time, although I can "juggle" daily things, there is always one particular hobby that drives me, and I love planning. I put past my full self into it. i.e. 110%

 

So for me the best thing to do is just to focus that drive on planning, so I do everything at the beginning of the year: make lists, purchase, plan, plan, plan, organize, etc. I have the similar thing to "nesting" modes for my hobbies, I run round in a frenzy all excited.

 

I feel like I could have written this word for word. I'm extremely passion driven as well, and when I get into something, I am IN. I am incredibly productive in that thing. I have learned from the past couple years of just trying to do simple preschool activities and things. I planned broadly all at once and then attempted to plan the details weekly--yeah, it didn't happen. I'm just not good at sustaining planning energy and being consistent. But I AM good at obsessively throwing myself into a project while my energy is high, so now I know that planning everything out for the entire year is likely going to be the thing that works for us. Incidentally, I'm going to try the filing thing for next year.

[melmichigan]

I plan in broad strokes in the beginning too. So I go through my TOG plans and marked what I own, what my library has, what I want to sub in. I write down a similar general plan for other subjects as needed, with most planning is a minimum. Between each unit of TOG I print all the SAP's and put together the kids notebooks for history and literature. Each weekend I write up lesson plans for the coming week and print any additional materials, WWE pages, science pages, anything else we will need based on where we are in our studies.

[Mystie]

I take several days (homeschool retreat) and research/order and then make a master 180 daily plan (omitting dates of execution). I then print off weekly charts as we go-marking off days from the master plan. This has served us for years. :)

 

A homeschool planning retreat sounds marvelous! I just do mine in fits and spurts as I can fit it into my days with the kids.

 

I do it all at once, but that is more setting it all up and getting things ready to go so that I can then wing it as we go. Math and skills things I have our MUS book, but they proceed as they master things, so I make decisions in the moment for stuff like that. Everything else is mostly memory work (all ready to go and laid out) and books (read the next part).

 

I just started a series on my blog about planning a year-at-a-time. I'd only ever seen one other person talk about doing it this way, so I was curious what the hive had to say.

 

I love talking planning!

[Mystie]

 

I'm trying to do more teacher prep now, pre-read chapters, note vocabulary and activities. We'll see how that goes. That will be weekly and monthly (we are going to do 3 weeks on, 1 week off, so I'll have time to plan).

 

We school 6 weeks on 1 week off, with occasional longer breaks. I don't think I need a weekly planning period to work out more detailed plans or get papers set, but I should do more -- that is, any -- prereading. It's just something I'd have to make time for. Sigh.