The past two months Everyday Scholé has been
discussing restful homeschool planning. We’re finishing out the series by
showing three different planning styles and how all lead to scholé in your
homeschool.
Anyone who has read my blog knows that I love to
plan our homeschool in minute detail. I’ve had more than one person tell me
they could never plan that way because it would be too stressful for them to
follow such a plan. Which is why I’m so excited about this post! Even if we all
do it differently a restful homeschool year can be found in a multitude of
approaches. I like to plan in detail. Even to the point of writing down page
numbers for daily math work for an entire year in advance!
Here’s how my super detailed planning helps keep
my year one of rest.
It
makes everything open and go.
I don’t use a lot of pre-planned curriculum
especially for history, science, and geography so taking the time to create
detailed lesson plans is a life saver when the school days get busy. I don’t
have to worry about flipping through books or gathering supplies. It’s all
pre-planned, printed, sorted, gathered, and ready to go for the day.
It
helps me instantly see where we are in the year.
When I have everything planned out by subject,
it just takes a quick glance at my planner to know exactly how much ground we’ve
covered and how much we have left to go in our academics. This lets me know if
we need to slow down or speed up in one or more subjects to stay at the correct
pace. That being said, though, I don’t necessarily rush us to finish in a
certain time frame {more about this later}.
It
ensures the academic goals I’ve made for the year are met.
Every year I try to make specific goals for my
children that I want to focus on for that year. The academic goals I make for
them are much easier to work into our schedule if I pre-plan the entire year. I
can make sure that those are goals are being systematically and thoroughly addressed through my planning. When I try to be looser with my planning, these goals are
one of the first things that are negatively affected. I forget about them
during the day to day repetition of school.
It
allows others to fill in if needed.
I’ve only had to make use of this option a
handful of times over the course of our homeschool, but I can promise you that
having everything pre-planned makes it 1,000 times easier for someone else to
step in and run the day for you. I’ve had my mother and Preacher Man take over
homeshcool duties in past years when I’ve left town for various things. And
most recently Grace ran our school day while I was in Fort Worth at the Great
Homeschool Convention. Pre-planning everything makes it simple to hand over the
reins if necessary. I’ve also discovered it helps your older children be more
independent with their work if you are sick.
The interesting thing about all of this
pre-planning is that it looks very rigid and regimented on paper, but my
implementation of all this planning is very restful and leisurely. I do not
stress if we don’t make it exactly through everything I had planned for the
year. Our days are very go with the flow. Our year has plenty of breaks and
days off. But all of this is possible because I have these wonderfully detailed
plans. If I didn’t, I would be a stressed out, worried mess. Which brings me to
my final point,
It
is super easy to tweak and adjust as needed for circumstances.
I find that the sweet spot of restful planning
for me is having super detailed lesson plans on paper, a regimented year long calendar, daily anchors for each major learning block, and back up plans when time is short. Without all of this preparation when circumstances did change, I
would be much more frazzled. Having plans and having schedules allows me to be
more flexible in how our time is spent. I have my plans and schedules as
parameters, but there is a lot of empty space on the road which makes our
homeschool a true journey of rest for me.
Not sure if my super detailed approach is right for you, check out my two other Everyday Scholé blogging friends who take different approaches to planning as well.
What
is your homeschool planning style that makes your year restful?
Chelli