Soo.. if you make a year at a glance, do you also make a weekly breakdown?

[wagnfun]

I've got the year at a glace under control. I've broken up the curriculum into weekly chunks. Now when I look at science or SOTW, I know what we are doing on the broad scale. Do you then make up a more detailed weekly schedule? or a per lesson science list that shows what material is needed for each lesson?

 

WOW.. I may actually have this year planned BEFORE school starts!!

 

Thanks for any replys!

[harrypmgaga]

Well when I am planning my school year, I make a "Year at Glance" which you have completed. I then go over and spread each curriculum over how many weeks we're going to have school in total (that is excluding term breaks, etc. just all of the weeks that school is in.)

 

So we have a 40-week schedule so I break each curricula to fit into the 40 weeks. Sometimes we might finish a subject before school ends by a term or so. So I supplement this with worksheets and the such for that subject.

 

After that, I make a whole week's DAILY shedule in advance, so I have 5 days in advance so I know what to do, and on the weekend I make the next week's daily schedule.

 

I hope this will help you plan your year ;)

 

Adrian.

[Peela]

In the past, yes I have broken it down to more detailed schedules, but this year...I have "term" schedules, because I like to jazz up each term, start new books etc and give each term it's own theme- and then, the only other thing I seem to need is a Weekly timetable sort of thingy, so we know what we are doing each day of the week, in general (eg maths daily, this book Tuesday, that book Thursday, Science Friday etc).

 

Then each week I might glance at the schedule and sometimes need to photocopy something, or plan a creative writing assignment, or look over something, but most things are just pick up and go so there is minimal planning that is needed anymre each week or day- its all done at the term level.

[8filltheheart]

I write detailed daily plans for 6-7 weeks at a time. That has been the perfect mix for our family. It is long enough to create very specific outcome objectives, yet short enough that if my kids aren't progressing at the pace I expected, I can tweak it in the next set of plans.

[Michelle in MO]

I make up detailed lesson plans generally about once a month, using Edu-Track. I generally have to tweak them a little daily, and doing it about once a month gives me leeway in case we run into a ditch somewhere.

[Trivium Academy]

First I made the Year at a Glance

Then I figured out a daily routine

and this year I divided our work into quarterly notebooks

 

The daily routine tells me what subject for what day (and what order if you prefer). I don't need a detailed weekly schedule, each week I just look at what books and supplies we need and put them in a convenient spot.

 

I'm spoiled now, I tried a few scheduling programs on the computer and it felt so tedious to put in all the details just to produce what I already have but in more detail. I don't need something that says:

 

Monday: read pages 1-16 of this history book

 

I know some do but I prefer to just have a list like this:

History books for the week: Gulliver's Travels (IR), Paddle-to-the-Sea (RA)

Science books for the week: Children of Summer (RA)

 

Even then I don't even need a list, I just put the books in an convenient spot and know to read them.

 

Probably doesn't help

[woolybear]

Peela, I'm curious, you said you like to give each term it's own theme. Could you give an example?

[8filltheheart]

My daily plans are really detailed, but since I don't use any standard curriculum and I put it together myself, it has to be.

 

For example, my rising 4th graders plans have a mixture of the standard "do the next thing" (like math) to including questions I want discussed/answered (history, science)

 

One day's plans are:

Math: Lesson 28

Science: Minn of the Mississippi pg 50. Draw a diagram of a dam and write a brief explanation on how it works

History: From Sea to Shining Sea pgs 115-120, label the original 13 colonies on your map

Reading: Squanto pg 82-93

English: week's assignment: How did Squanto help the settlers? Skills? Food? Trade?

Week 5 in mom's book (she is my guinea pig for the writing curriculum I am developing)

Spelling: 1 lesson

French: 30 mins of Tell Me More French

Religion: pg 49, questions 1 and 2

 

 

Without it planned out, I would never be able to keep track of who is doing what and they would get assigned work unevenly.....some days I would give too much to make up for my guilt thinking about the days they do too little!! :)

[TN Mama]

I am a planner so I have several different types of plans laid out. And actually, the Year at a Glance was the last one I put together. It is so pretty with all the colors. :)

 

I have:

Year at a Glance

A block schedule showing how much time I plan to spend on each subject and how much time that comes out to per day

Daily schedule that I'll fill out 1-2 weeks in advance

Separate schedule for SOTW and Science because other things are added in to these programs.

 

All of these are put into the planner I've created along with sheets I've adapted/personalized from donna young files (school year calendar, field trip log, book logs, extracurricular, etc). I really wanted to have my planner comb bound or coil bound, but then I started thinking of how I'll probably add things in (perfect example - Year at a Glance), so I 3 hole punched it instead.

 

Rereading the above makes me think of a book title I just heard about - We Plan, God Laughs.

[EKS]

It depends. If I'm pretty sure that we will always get one "chunk" done per day done no matter what then I make a detailed list. But for certain things, for example science this year for my 12yo, I make a list of tasks that need to be done during the year but I don't assign them to days. I do this because I'm not sure just how much we will be able to get done each day, though in this particular case, I know that we need to average three "tasks" per day to finish everything in one year.

 

I hope this makes sense.

[Jennefer@SSA]

My year at a glance is only just the start to my planning. I then break our year into four 10 week quarters. I plan one quarter at a time in detail. Each week gets it's own page.

 

For history and science I will get all the books for that time gathered and placed in a milk crate (one for history and one for science) along with all the supplies we will need for every project/experiment during that entire 10 weeks. I have learned that if I don't get materials gathered ahead of time it just doesn't get done! I do better spending a day or two running to stores and gathering up supplies rather than doing it here and there. ;)

 

For the other subjects I read ahead to see what we will be covering, making notes for how I want to teach things and areas where I feel ds7 may struggle (or breeze through). I get any copies ready we may need and do any other prep for that as well.

 

Here is a link to the lesson plan form I used last year. (Lesson Plan Form)It was made using Excel (which dh had to help me do). I plan on doing something similar this year but adding social/emotional/physical goals for each quarter as well. I think this will help me be more intentional about educating the whole child - not just nurturing their intellect!

[Jennefer@SSA]

Without it planned out, I would never be able to keep track of who is doing what and they would get assigned work unevenly.....some days I would give too much to make up for my guilt thinking about the days they do too little!!

 

:iagree:

 

This is so true for me as well! :)

[sweetbaby]

:iagree: Me too! If I don't have a detailed weekly plan then nothing gets done efficiently. I love having my books planned out to the pages on each day. It's easy for me to see where we are and catch up if "life" happens.

 

I have created my daily plans on Microsoft Word just by going to "insert" table and putting in the number for the columns and rows then clicking "adjust size according to content" so that I can type in as much info as needed without worrying about adjusting my boxes. I also have the Homeschool Tracker. I can put in the pages or lessons each week and print them out as weekly plans or even as daily assignment check lists for my children. This is wonderful because it takes some of the form creating off me and it allows them to have a little responsibility in their studies.

[WTMindy]

I have year-at-a-glance. I also have quarterly planning page for TOG to make sure I know which things I want to make sure that I hit. I don't have anything fancy for this. Just a table that lists what our writing topic will be, dictation assignment, what we'll put on our notebooking pages, which project we will do, which assessment, what memory work we will do, and anything else I want to remember to do that week. Maybe my next step will be to make that a little fancier. ;)

 

I use more of a weekly checklist rather than a lesson plan. Because, most of the things are on my year-at-a-glance form. YOu can see that on my blog.

 

This year I am doing something new. I liked the quarterly TOG notebooks last year so much that I am making a notebook for all the daily assignments. I found that a quarters worth of work was too much, so I am making a monthly one. I tore up their workbooks (and made some copies) and used my new Levinger Circa punch to put these together! At the front of the monthly notebook there is a checklist of all the assignments for the month, so the kids can keep track of what needs to be done.

 

We'll see how this works! :-)

[wagnfun]

Mindy,

 

how do you make little boxes? Thanks for your brain.

[sweetbaby]

That looks really great, Mindy!:001_smile:

[Peela]

Peela, I'm curious, you said you like to give each term it's own theme. Could you give an example?

 

OK, for example this year we are doing Ancients, 2nd time around (1st time was with SOTW, this time I am doing it differently and using Ambleside for the 2nd half). First term, the theme was pre-history, early man and early civilizations. 2nd term was Egypt, and Ancient Religions- Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism etc. 3rd term was Ancient Greece and 4th term, which we are in now, is Ancient Rome.

Most of our reading (history and literature) is focused around the theme of the term- I will try and start and finish books related to the theme within the term- so that involves breaking each book down into 10 weeks.

It just gives each term a fresh feeling- but our year is divided nicely into four 10 week terms with 2 weeks holiday in between except for the summer holidays (at Christmas, here) , so it is quite suitable for dividing up this way.

[WTMindy]

Mindy,

 

how do you make little boxes? Thanks for your brain.

In a Word document go to Insert on the tool bar. Choose "symbol" and a box full of symbols will pop up. You can size it by changing the size of the font and then copy and paste it. You can get fancy by adding a shadow to the sybol by highlighting and right clicking on the symbol and choosing font and then adding shadow.

You can also do it by customizing the bullets (under format). There is one that has squares, but I can't ever quite get the spacing to work the way I want it, so I find it easier to cut and paste the symbol.

[Guest Grace D]

Is "Year at a Glance" just your own overview of the year or do you use certain/special forms of some kind?

[Jennefer@SSA]

Here is a link to a recent thread about how others use the Year at a Glance form:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48196

 

Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions!

[susie in tx]

I write detailed daily plans for 6-7 weeks at a time. That has been the perfect mix for our family. It is long enough to create very specific outcome objectives, yet short enough that if my kids aren't progressing at the pace I expected, I can tweak it in the next set of plans.

 

This is what I try to do as well. This year, though, I made enough changes that we are going to go week to week for a couple of weeks. I'm still going to make time to get the 6 weekly plans made, but they are very, very subject to change.