Planning Rocks!!

Just before the half term I sat down with our Galloping the Globe, (Geography), Story of the World (history) and Exploring Creation through Astronomy (Science) curriculums and planned about 4 weeks worth - and this last week we actually managed to cover all the subjects - I rarely manage to do ALL these subjects in one week - and I have to admit it was all down to the planning - I had a sheet to look at each day to see what we were doing and so we achieved it!

I'm all for "unschooling" or "autonomous learning" or whatever you want to name it and I know an awful lot of learning happens without us actually planning and structuring it but I feel it's important (for us) to cover these subjects - if any of the children take a paticular interest in something then they will be free to explore it further and this does sometimes happen - but if they are never exposed to these new things/new subjects how will they get an interest in it?

I've long given up trying to do in depth studies with the children about any subject as they do generally lose interest - I think I've finally come to realise that it is absolutely fine to just skim the surface - and it's surprising just what they do remember!

Ever since we began "officially" home educating I would end up frustrated and feeling that we were not covering enough and then just "give up" so we would end up doing nothing (other than maths and reading and the occasional special interest) but once I grasped that it was ok to only skim the surface, for example in galloping the globe - it was fine to look for the country on a globe colour a flag in and discuss what animals originate from there, it helped me feel like we had achieved something!

I am learning so much on my journey as a mother and a home educator, it definately makes my life a richer experience!

And here's just three of my beautiful loving girls :-)

Home School Planning - plan of action

Planning seems to be a theme running through my life at the moment lol. I tend towards going with the flow and being quite relaxed but after lots of prayer and thought I have realised that at this particular season in my life I need to do some planning - otherwise we will be achieving very little. I'm happy for my children to be follwing their own particular interests in the future but right now with 5 little ones under 8 and no independent readers there has to be some structure for me to keep sane and so that we can concentrate on learning to read!
So I decided to plan the childrens schooling but I was absolutely clueless where to begin - I looked at forms but none of them really seemed to give me a real guideline to what I could do and how I could get down my ideas onto paper to make them easier to follow so here's what I did:-

First, I listed my childrens names and set a couple of goals each for the year - the only goals I noted was to have them reading independently and complete the next math u see book (Alpha)

(thought best to start small)

Then I listed all the curriculum etc I wanted to use per child - eg math u see, story of the world, exploring creation, hooked on phonics (we use slightly different reading programs for my older two and I don't do all the same for my younger ones) - I guess this would be course of study?

I also noted which subjects we would do all together (such as calendar time, bible time etc)

Then I made a table with mon - fri down the side and childrens names along the top and in each box wrote which subjects which day - so reading prog and maths every day and history, science, geography etc split up over the week for the older two and I wrote down tot trays/ tot school for younger two

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchool.html

I then noted which lessons need planning - for example history I need to copy the activity sheets etc and plan what to do for bible time etc

My next task is to actually plan the lessons lol I think I wll get a folder with dividers in and print out a weeks worth (or maybe two just to keep ahead) of sheets I will need etc so its all ready and the night before I will get out what I need from planning folder to have to hand.

I hope this helps anyone who might have been in the same situation as me - planning is quite simple but its hard sometimes to know where to start and how to break it down into something manageable.