The planner I bought for school is a typical school assignment planner. It has a calender at the beginning of each month and weekly pages.
On the calender pages I record all of our commitments, appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and accomplishments. In the Notes section, I do my advance planning, so I know what I need to focus on. In August, it was Vacation Bible School and berry picking/processing. This month, it is taxes, spring cleaning, sewing and socializing.
On the weekly pages I record the school work that we have done, each day. I take complete notes on the reading, writing and arithmetic assignments. I also keep a record of art, P.E. and musical accomplishments. Refer to the Home Schooling page for our basic schedule.
The sticky note is where I do my planning for the upcoming week. On it, I list the resource and the lessons I hope to accomplish. This helps to keep me on track. It only takes only a few minutes each week; and, it lets the kids know that I am not piling excessive work on them.
I only plan one week at a time so I can adjust easily. Before we began this school year, I had sat down with all of the materials and tried to figure out how far we would get in a years time. In the first three weeks of school we had covered most of what I had planned on taking us through Thanks Giving. Tho, there have been a few times, when I have had to slow down. Some things they have not pick up on as quickly as I thought they would.
This is the beauty of home schooling. Each person is allowed to learn a subject and move on. If they know the spelling words, we do not spend a week reviewing them. If they don’t get a subject right away, we may drag it out for a week or more, until they are proficient and ready to move on. In this manner, they are confident of what they know. They have not only learned a subject, but mastered it to the degree it was taught.
