there goes all my planning...

[nertsmommy]

DD(4) came to me last Tuesday night and asked my to teach her to read because she wanted to read a book to her brother. I explained that I could't teach her to read in the 5 mins. before bedtime. I told her that I would start her on Hooked on Phonics in the morning.

 

Morning came and I put in the cd for HOP. I stood behind her watching. I figured she'd get frustrated and decide she wanted to wait. She read 8 out of 10 of the words. So I'm tossing out all my planning I'd done for her language arts and I'm moving on with Hooked on Phonics. She's already ready to move on to the next lesson and DS is flipping because then she'll be where he is.

 

As for DS, he's getting the math concepts quickly so I'm moving faster than I had planned with him as well. What can I do when he looks me in the eye and says, "I know how to do this. Can we please learn something new now?"

 

So much for all the time I spent planning. :glare: I think from now on I'm not planning and I'll just wing it. :D

[Mama_Rana]

I tend to plan the order of things, map out a pace but with flexibility, and go from there. Some days we skip things, other days we spend longer than I'd planned. It's all good. <3 <3 <3

[MindyD]

My dd did the same thing. I'd planned all kinds of things, and we sat down on the first day of school last year to start. She told me she could already read, went and picked up a book, and started reading fluently. Only a few months before, I'd tried to start and she just couldn't get it. Apparently it suddenly clicked. :001_smile:

[Brigitte]

At those ages, you can probably skip the plans and just wing it, especially with the 4 y.o. :)

[nertsmommy]

At those ages, you can probably skip the plans and just wing it, especially with the 4 y.o. :)

 

That was originally my plan. I found so many fun things I wanted to do and I needed some sort of schedule so I made plans. I need to find a way to organize my fun activities. There were a lot of things I forgot to do with them last year that I wanted to make sure I didn't do that again.

 

One good thing, I feel more confident now that they are learning and I can teach them.

[Night Elf]

Sounds perfect! My dd14 told me at age 4 that I had to teach her to read and I bought Hooked on Phonics the next day. She went through that program in about 6 months because she worked on it every single day, including the weekends. She was determined and did great with it. I don't know if it's still the same though. When i got it, it was a huge $300 kit. It was worth every penny as it was the best curriculum purchase I made in my 10 years of homeschooling, hands down. And I bought a lot of curriculum over the years.

[Kirch]

I plan what I want to do and a basic schedule, but for us, trying to plan more than a week or so at a time of specific lessons is time wasted. We either go faster or slower than what I expected. I just keep track of where we are vs. where I want to be when we get to the end of the year and then plan weekly and keep plugging away at the next thing. With some things I do plan out in more detail (how many days to spend on this chapter in history and what activities to do, etc.), but I've given up trying to tie it to dates. I just can't seem to make that work for us!

[mom2one]

That's exactly why I'm so reluctant to plan things out very specifically. I just can't gauge how quickly she'll fly through some things or how long she'll drag out others.

 

So, my new method is to create six-week goals. At the end of six weeks I'll evaluate our progress and set goals for the upcoming six week period. But the biggest thing is to remind myself that they're simply goals. If we don't make the goal in spelling, we won't stress out about it as long as we're actually putting in the time each day. But if we're flying through math and get done with six weeks worth of work in four weeks, we'll keep right on going.

 

I'm also planning a 1-2 week break after every six weeks, with the idea that we'll school year round. The break will be used for travel, resting, doing fun things, holidays, and catching up if we're falling seriously behind where I think we should be in an area.