A Year of (Homeschool) Planners

Here's the thing; I am not a big homeschool planner, I'll just say that right up front. I find rigid schedules a source of stress (what will I do when we inevitably fall behind? what if something that I've meticulously planned for does not go at the pace I've anticipated?) but I do like to have a rhythm to lean on, a spine to return to whenever we are able.

My plan though is fluid, flexible and I know up front, that the plan I make at the beginning of the year will not be the same as the plans I am making towards the end of the school year. And that is a-okay by me!

I start out by creating an overview of our year; on this I include birthdays, festivals and holidays, and some basic items that we want to look at each quarter, such as Artist Study, Composer Study and Shakespeare. (I use a basic composition book as my homeschool planner each year, which gives me so much freedom! I can create just the right planner for our needs, and can change it as and when our needs change. Perfect!)

I then create a monthly calendar, with the weeks numbered; this makes it easier for me to see, at a glance, how our curricula aligns with the month. Along the right hand edge I have a separate column for notes; here I include the basics we'll be covering, one off items and more sporadic items I want to make sure we get to.

Next is a two page spread for each week. I typically fill in the details for this each weekend for the week to come; on the left hand page I include our daily reading and items to cover, weekly reading items, and then specific chapters or lessons to do. And on the right hand page I make note of all the books we read. And yes! - I really do mean all the books. I often find myself returning to my old homeschool planners to look up books that we particularly enjoyed, to read again for a particular season or for my two younger children, Buttercup and Seal Pup.

And finally, I have a daily rhythm. This one aspect could be my biggest take away from the Waldorf method; to have a daily rhythm to lean on, rather than a schedule. My children find it very reassuring to know what is coming up next; to have a rhythm of our days. We don't follow this religiously, but like my other schedules, it is something for us to lean on.



I try to alternate busy periods with times of rest or unstructured time. We go for a walk most days, and have plenty of time for outings and fieldtrips. Also, we try really hard to finish off all our homeschool work by lunch time, to give ourselves the afternoons 'off' (although we all know that learning happens just as much, if not more, in those afternoons 'off' as it does during official homeschool time!)

And now you are probably wondering what we fill those days with! And how we fit it all in?! But enough for today; I'll share those details in another post or two!

Do you homeschool? What does your planner look like? 
Leave a comment and let me know; I'd love to hear from you 
Or leave a link back to your own blog post!

 

My Weekly Dashboard

So maybe it is just me, but I find it very difficult to live 'simply' when my life is disorganized.

Knowing what is coming up and how I am going to get things done, really gives me the confidence to let go of those aspects a little bit. If I have a plan, I don't have to THINK about it all!

Along with my monthly wall calendar where I keep track of the bulk of my day to day events (classes, meetings, trips, birthdays), and my smart phone calendar where I keep track of the day to day minutiae (library books due back, subscriptions and bills due) I also take time each weekend to create to plans for my upcoming week - one for meals and the other for our homeschool plan.

Before I go further I should add that I am not a natural planner. I don;t feel a strong need to map things out like this, but that doing so stops the daily panic of 'what ARE we going to eat tonight?' and 'WHAT did we do for school last week?!'

My meal plan is a really basic affair, and one that I received as part of a bundle from Waldorfish, but I really like the simple layout, and that there are blocks for breakfast, lunch and grazing platters (affectionately known in our home as monkey platters!) I've written before about how I tend to go about creating my menu plans, here. It's still working for us!

And before I go any further with my homeschool plan, I should add a humongous caveat.
Yes! - I make a plan each week.
No - I don't expect us to do this each week.

Again, I've found that if I make a plan, it frees up a little extra brain space for me. When we are ready for our next 'school' project, I can just check my book for inspiration. I'll write more on how we homeschool another time, because honestly that's a huge multi- post project all by itself.

After struggling to find a homeschool planner that I loved, that had the flexibility I wanted for our family's schooling needs, I created my own out of a 50 cent composition book. I used this post as my inspiration, but honestly my planner has evolved so much since I first started doing this at the beginning of the school year. But that's the beauty of it! - now it's my own creation,a nd it perfectly fits my needs. Joy!

And lastly, my To Do book. This is a newer addition for me, and was borne from the need for me to write out to do lists and random notes. Am I the only person who finds that physically writing something out with pen and paper helps me remember it better?!

This one is still a bit of a work in progress, and I know it will be evolving over the upcoming months, but it's good to have a collected place to jot everything down, and a beautiful book at that, rather than the countless scraps of paper.

I use a lovely Moleskine notebook for this; it had all the features I wanted; a ribbon for marking my place, an elastic strap for holding it closed, and a pocket int he back for any random scraps of paper that may just need to be contained (ahem).