How to make achievable plan?

[david5329]

For those of you that makes plan, do you plan for a year or a month/week/day/hour? What if your original plan did not get done?  I find myself always falling behind, that makes myself uneasy.  

To make things clear, I am not home schooling.  My daughter goes to public school.  I am trying to plan after school study, which I count about 4 to 6 hours per week.  

 

[Targhee]

I make big general plans for the year, but I only make detailed plans for a week at a time. I hate feeling “behind” because then I feel I will never catch up so why even try...  Having the big plans (eg a text I want to cover, or some skills I want to teach) keeps me oriented and moving forward. The detailed weekly plans keep me accountable but able to adjust for life.

[HomeAgain]

3 hours ago, Targhee said:

I make big general plans for the year, but I only make detailed plans for a week at a time. I hate feeling “behind” because then I feel I will never catch up so why even try...  Having the big plans (eg a text I want to cover, or some skills I want to teach) keeps me oriented and moving forward. The detailed weekly plans keep me accountable but able to adjust for life.

This.  And we plan for only 4 days with the 5th being a flex day.

[Emba]

Especially in the summer, I would leave lots of space in the plan for stuff that comes up. Some days swimming or visiting relatives is just a better use of the time.   

For homeschool I go week by week. I write out my plan and check things off as I go. The three R’s are my big priority, so if I get behind I look for ways to combine subjects (write about History for example) or just drop things that can wait. 

[Farrar]

Seconding the above - big picture goals that you check in with periodically but which are very general - finish algebra by the end of the year or improve writing enough to move into essays or whatever - coupled with detailed short term plans for the next week or month at most.

Sometimes you don't have to plan much. I often don't. I tend to set something up and then just "do the next thing." If you're doing a simple line up of stuff or a laid out curriculum, then that's an okay way to plan. Figure out how long you think it realistically should take, check in with that time frame every month or so, and then just do the work.

[Targhee]

1 hour ago, Farrar said:

Seconding the above - big picture goals that you check in with periodically but which are very general - finish algebra by the end of the year or improve writing enough to move into essays or whatever - coupled with detailed short term plans for the next week or month at most.

Sometimes you don't have to plan much. I often don't. I tend to set something up and then just "do the next thing." If you're doing a simple line up of stuff or a laid out curriculum, then that's an okay way to plan. Figure out how long you think it realistically should take, check in with that time frame every month or so, and then just do the work.

Yes, “do the next thing” is a great way to work around life! Even if you have detailed steps, of what you put on your schedule/checklist is “work on ___” and you refer back to the steps in your breakdown of “do the next thing” you won’t get bogged down as much as if had the detailed step on the checklist.  Eg if your thing to get done is planning SOTW history for Fall you might create a step-wise process that includes: ask WTM board for favorite lit suggestions, preview book suggestions, select and order books, create timeline figures for first term, purchase school supplies (binder, color pencils, glue, timeline notebook). But on your daily to-do list you only put down “work on history for Fall” and get done what you can from the list.  If you work on it you check it off that day and move on.  If you instead had “ask the WTM board for favorite lit suggestions” on your checklist it would be there a while unfinished and that can be mentally defeating.

[ScoutTN]

On 7/2/2018 at 1:21 AM, Targhee said:

I make big general plans for the year, but I only make detailed plans for a week at a time. I hate feeling “behind” because then I feel I will never catch up so why even try...  Having the big plans (eg a text I want to cover, or some skills I want to teach) keeps me oriented and moving forward. The detailed weekly plans keep me accountable but able to adjust for life.

This, exactly!

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

I do similar to what others have said: I pick the books and curricula we will use for the year and make more detailed plans each weekend.  I do have a general schedule for our weeks, though.  Some subjects are every day, others are 1-3 times a week, scheduled for particular days.  Some subjects have multiple books, and I also schedule those out for a particular day of the week.  It is easy to just do the next chapter, and if we miss it one week it's not a big deal.  We just do the next chapter the following week instead.  When we finish a book we are either done with the subject for the year or move on to another book.