Here you are at the beginning of a new homeschool year.
You have your stacks of books, workbooks, and teacher manuals. Now how do you
transfer all of those materials into a workable learning plan for the year?
It’s taken me a long time to write the last of my
planning posts. Mostly because I wasn’t sure what my own method was for
planning subjects. I’ve tried every planning book ever invented. Seriously. All
of them. I’ve done electronic planning. I’ve tried various paper planners. I’ve
tried not pre-planning our subjects {ACK!} which didn’t last long for my type-A
self. I’ve tried planning just a few weeks at a time, but I really like knowing
the big picture well in advance.
But
there are two major problems with planning all of your subjects for an entire
year…
1) What do you do if a child moves more
quickly through one subject than the others?
2) What do you do if you have to change
some {or ALL} of your curriculum in the middle of the year?
Both
of these scenarios can wreck a nicely pre-planned year.
Before we get started with planning our subjects out
for the year, you need two pieces of information. You need to know how many
days you plan on schooling and how many times a week you plan on doing each
subject. Check out my How I Plan Our Homescool Year and How I Plan Our Homeschool Week if you need help figuring those things out.
Here’s my process:
1) Go to Donna Young’s website {AMAZINGLY
helpful place!} and print off 4 pages of the subject planner for each subject.
These four pages are enough to plan 180 days of lessons. If you are doing a
subject for less than 180 days, then only print out as many sheets as you need.
For example, the subjects we only do three days a week, I would only need to
print three sheets.
She actually has an option to type your plans into a pdf file of these worksheets here. I chose this option because the type is MUCH smaller than I can write in the boxes so I can fit more in each square. The only drawback to using the typeable pdf is that there is only one page, so be sure and print your plans before erasing it to move on to the next page.
She actually has an option to type your plans into a pdf file of these worksheets here. I chose this option because the type is MUCH smaller than I can write in the boxes so I can fit more in each square. The only drawback to using the typeable pdf is that there is only one page, so be sure and print your plans before erasing it to move on to the next page.
Donna Young is now charging to access the subject planner form so I've made my own which you can download here for free.
Now fill in the subject sheets with
your assignments, page numbers, reading assignment, topics to study, etc. Some
subjects will be a lot more detailed about what you want to do while some will
mostly be page numbers.
Here is a picture of my filled out
math subject sheet (mainly page numbers):
Here is a shot of my science subject
sheet (more detail):
This step is the most time consuming,
but pays the most dividends. An entire year of assignments at your fingertips,
the thought makes me giddy!
To make this chore a little less
intense, I plan the subject as the book/s arrive in the mail. I don’t order our
entire curriculum at one time but spread out purchases over the year due to
finances. As one subject arrives, I plan it immediately, print out my sheets
and file them away. This makes the planning not take as long. I have had
marathon planning sessions where I would spend a week planning every subject in
one fell swoop. I don’t recommend that unless you have a live-in housekeeper to
take care of your family and an intravenous supply of caffeine.
The best part is that pre-planning for the entire year by subject solves the two problems I
had at the beginning of this post:
1) What do you do if a child moves more
quickly through one subject than the others?
You simply mark off all of those completed boxes on your subject plan and move
to the next box.
2) What do you do if you have to change
some {or ALL} of your curriculum in the middle of the year?
Throw away the old subject plan you had and make new ones for the new
curriculum.
Another added bonus is to save those subject sheets by
grade for any future students you have. Everything will be planned out for you
already!
Find the other planning posts in this series here:
