Planning: Do you just pace or do you micro-plan?? Why?

[KathyJo]

I recently gave each of my oldest two boys a single page with their school plans for the year on it. It's a one week schedule which we'll repeat approximately 36 times with varying degrees of variation. :-) It tells them which days they should do which subjects, how many pages of each spine to read and when, and reminds them to choose additional reading from our master reading list.

 

I never attempted to micro-manage subjects like math, but I used to schedule all the reading out, 180 days with places to check off each reading assignment. My children are happier now that I've relaxed, and weirdly enough, boys #2 and #3 actually seem to read more now. 

[KathyJo]

Here's boy#2's schedule. Those pics at the top are ZOMBIE unicorns. I'm not sure what's wrong with my kids. Older boy's has a line of TARDISes and says "History is Timey Wimey." Who says schedules can't be... interesting?

[happypamama]

I don't micro-plan to the extent of "on day X, we will do Y." What I do do is to decide the order in which we'll cover things; most of it is just do the next thing in the book, so it's easy. I have a general idea of how much will be a day's worth of work, but I also know that I may adjust that -- we might be really into science and want to do two lessons, or my son's math will be easy, and he'll want to do more pages. Or a concept will be harder, and he'll only want to do a page or two, or the day is just not coming together (kids are distracted, small kids are interrupting, whatever), and we'll only do a small portion of science or history. I'm less about completing a certain amount of work (except for math and grammar-related stuff for kids who have to take standardized tests in the spring) and more about enjoying it more. But having a plan does help me to make sure that we get the extras done; it's very easy for me to default to doing math, literature, and Latin -- which is great, but they do need a bit more than that. And for science, I absolutely have to have a detailed plan, because it's not my favorite subject, and without some sort of detailed plan, I will let it slide. One way or another, whether I do it or the package does it, it has to be spelled out for me easily, so that each week, I can open and go.