Homeschool Planning!

I feel as if I was picked up in a tornado a little bit after Christmas, and plopped back down at the end of the school year. That should tell you a little bit about how organized the second part of our school year has been! I decided that the only thing that is going to get this huge weight of disorganization off my shoulders is to sit down and plan out the coming year.

What I am NOT going to do in this blog post is to lay out our lesson plan. I wouldn't do that, because our lesson plan would not work for anyone else I know. Not because we're all that advanced, or that we're doing things that others cannot. It's because all of my kids are in different grades on different subjects. In other words, my 11 year old son would be going into the 6th grade in public school. But he is halfway through with 8th grade math. He is reading and writing Japanese on a high school level. He reads on a Sophomore level, and he is practically a genius in sciences. But we started history from the beginning of time, literally. So we haven't even touched the Civil War, or any recent events. We're still learning about Ancient Egypt. So a typical 6th grade curriculum would thoroughly bore him in some areas, but then in history, he would end up skipping about 1500 years on a timeline!

What I WILL provide below are some links to sites that can help you in your quest to lay out the perfect curriculum for YOUR family!

The first thing to remember is, while goals are good and often necessary, your childs understanding of a topic of study should ultimately dictate how quickly you move through a study. If my kids seem bored to tears with a new math curriculum, and most of it is review, I generally have no problem picking out problems from a few chapters to make sure they understand the concepts, then moving along when necessary.

A second thing to remember is, no matter how young your child is, long-term goals are a good thing. Much like a business plan, you should have goals of where you would LIKE to be at the end of a year, at the end of elementary school, middle school and high school years, and what subjects you would LIKE to have thoroughly studied in your homeschool adventures.

One last thing to keep in mind: Don't panic if life gets the best of you, and you miss a day here or there. One of my favorite things about homeschooling is, some days you're ahead, some days you're behind... but when you are one-on-one with your kids, you always win.

Some helpful planning links:
http://donnayoung.org/
http://homeschool-curricula.suite101.com/article.cfm/homeschool_lesson_planning
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/gettingorganized/planner.php
http://www.geocities.com/mamabrown_1122/planning.htm
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/materials/SW4Records.htm
http://www.eho.org/homeschool_prep/homeschool_basics.asp

May God bless your upcoming year!