Planning Question (when kids use their own planners)

[Osmosis Mom]

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel, only to simplify. Is there any smart way -whatsoever!- to have kids' assignments in their own planners so they can see what they have to do?

 

I don't want to write plans we don't get to. I am a fly-by-my pants type of gal, meanng that if I feel like going somewhere then that's what we do. Plus we have tons of interruptions during the year, naturally occurring.

 

I am toying with the idea of having a weekly meeting with my two-three older kids and going over the upcoming week with them. This would either be Sunday PM or Monday AM. Pro's to this is that they know what is going on, and they write in their assignments while we discuss and thus get some ownership. Con's would be finding the right time to totally always get to this.

 

Feel free to help me brainstorm. I am not sure if I should use this approach with my ds 10 as well. He does love his planner! My twins couldn't care less and might need a different approach. I just know that planning ahead doesn't work here. Having goals, yes, of course. Being flexible, all important.

[Deb in NZ]

I like weekly sheets for my dc, but usually by mid-year "life happens" & I don't get their work sheets completed before mondays & the amount of work we complete drops off drastically. So this year I made up yearly sheets for each subject & a term sheet with a box to check off for each child. This way each dc only needs to look at the term sheet to see that A, B, C, etc. need to be completed today & they turn to A's year sheet & work on the next block of work. No more messy planning pages from when "life happens." And I can use dd's subject pages with my ds when he's ready.

 

Blessings,

[Frontier Mom]

This is interesting because I am currently planning our first year with TOG and they suggest exactly this. That was one of the reasons I liked the program so I could get the older two to assume more responsibility in their daily work.

 

Not sure how it will all come together, but I think your idea is great.

[Pamela H in Texas]

At the meeting (weekly for ds, but it's been less than monthly for dd for years), we simply discussed what was to get done by when. It was then kiddo's job to figure out how it was going to get done.

 

So for ds, I may say, "get 4 lessons of science done this week." He writes that down (I use one of the forms from Donna Young's site) and then he records when he does it when he does it (we have to keep time records for the state in his case; my daughter just marks it off that it's done).

 

We do this for each subject. Now, for ds, it's pretty easy because the k12 curriculum gives us the option of just printing it out at the beginning of the week. This way, if he doesn't do it Monday, he still knows what TO do (because K12 will allow him to put it off indefinitely, but Mom won't!).

 

For dd, I would simply say, "we need to get through chapter 5 by Oct 16th." She would figure out how many lessons that was, write it out on her Donna Young sheets spread out evenly between the meeting date and Oct 16th.

 

Oh, on our Donna Young forms....there are 5 boxes across but we didn't consider that Monday through Friday. Instead, it was just 5 boxes. You could put two lessons per box or lessons in the first four boxes but do them on Wed through Sunday or whatever you wanted to do. This works well because you could be on more than one sheet at a time if life happened. Just have all of the sheets for one grading period, semester, whatever in a folder together.

 

Oh, and we marked off with different colors (highlighters) and/or those mini stickers or whatever. It's much easier to see that way.

 

HTHs a little,

[Osmosis Mom]

Deb in NZ, what you are doing is exactly what I want to do this year; I just hadn't thought it out yet as clearly. I *then* want to meet weekly to hang with those twwo older kids and see them fill their planners since they have a need to know what is going to happen and to plan their time plus to gain ownership.

 

Pamela, I need somethng more specific than # number of lessons. I learned the hard way that those kids need more accountability and mom-interference.

 

I am still brainstorming when the weekly meeting would be a good time. We basically do school four days a week since Friday is often used for museum-trips and etc. Weekends can be used to catch up, but usually gets filled with activities and logistics. It's not that school is not our priority, but there are so many other things taking place here as well and I have to be everywhere at once.