Homeschool planning a new year

May 29, 2017Tracy

As we are wrapping up the last of our subjects, I’m in the throes of homeschool planning for the new school year. My decisions are all made, my online carts are empty, and the boxes of curriculum are beginning to roll in. In my routine, May and June are my intense planning months. I like to get all my homeschool planning out of the way so that I can truly take a break. Nothing homeschool related is swirling around in my brain come July and August; it’s done, on the shelf, and just waiting for us.

I plan the new year while the struggles of this year are fresh on my mind. I map out my solutions to all of our homeschool problems, from learning struggles to organization-fails, and then give it all a rest. My kids salivate over the new folders and books they are dying to read, and I dangle next year in front of them—my proverbial carrot—tantalizing their appetite for next year’s menu. It’s fun. We all love this time of year.

So since homeschool planning is consuming all my mind and energy right now, I thought I’d share with you the method to my madness, my steps to mapping out our next year. And over the next couple of weeks, I’ll go into more detail.

My steps to homeschool planning:

Planning our core curriculum: Tapestry of Grace

I’ll just give you a brief summary here, but just know this one step is getting a complete post of it’s own. For one, 60% of my homeschool planning is tied into Tapestry of Grace. It’s a huge undertaking, and when it’s finally done, I feel like I’ve scaled Mt. Everest. When I plan Tapestry, I’m not just planning our history studies; I’m planning our reading list, literature skills, Bible study, writing assignments, arts and crafts, and geography—for all three kids! This year, I will be teaching Tapestry of Grace on three of the four different levels that the curriculum provides: lower grammar, upper grammar, and dialectic. I combine as much as I can, and have my upper grammar student practicing her reading-aloud skills by reading the lower grammar book choices to my kindergartener. A lot of the writing, arts, crafts, and even Bible we will be doing together. The key to teaching multiple ages and keeping your sanity is to combine as much as you possibly can so that you can maximize your time. Tapestry of Grace is wonderful for this.

Gathering our other curriculum.

I have to see what I have to be able to plan. I can’t visualize anything on my own. Whether my husband is discussing house renovations or I’m planning math, I just can’t imagine what something is going to look like until I have it in front of me. Thus, the next step for me is to lay it all out where I can see what I’m working with. I’m also a sucker for the downloadable, print-your-own curriculum. I have a decent printer that uses inexpensive ink, and I shop paper prices and buy it in bulk by the case. So, in order to see what I have, I usually have a ton of printing to finish. Once everyone’s curriculum has been printed or has arrived in the mail, then I’ll take a look at one child’s complete curriculum at a time.

Mapping out the weekly/daily schedule.

In order to make sure I’m not biting off more than we can all chew in a reasonable amount of time, I sketch out a rough daily schedule for each child. It’s not a precise schedule. I simply jot done each child subject’s, the days of the week they will work on that subject, and how much time I anticipate them spending on that subject. I’ll also jot down how much time I expect to work one-on-one with each child. This way, if I’ve planned for a subject to take 15 min. each day, then I need to be sure I don’t assign more than 15 minutes worth of work. If I’ve decided that a total of one and a half hours of independent work is appropriate for one child, than I need to be sure I don’t assign him more than that. If I have only 45 minute with each child, than I need to be sure that I don’t assign more work than we can get through in that amount of time. A rough-draft of our schedule provides boundaries for me as I plan the assignments.

Tackling the master plan.

Some subjects require more planning than others. But in general I usually keep this as simple as possible. I divide our year into three 12 week terms. Some resources I use for just one term, to add some variety to our year. For the subjects that we will be doing through out the year, I schedule out how many lessons we need to accomplish each term or how many page numbers we need to get through. Some subjects, like math, require nothing more than that. Other subjects, like science or writing, I need to think through more specific assignments. Because I’m a little OCD about my planning, I plan on “scrap paper”; I actually have a notebook of grid paper that is specifically for these rough draft plans. Then, when I’ve sketched it all out the way I like it and I’m finished making all my mistakes and alterations, I’ll copy it into a finalized plan for my planner. (I’m an editor at heart, even more than a writer, so everything I do has to have at least a few rough drafts and revisions—even my text messages.)

Organizing the resources.

This is not necessarily a final step. Usually, I’m organizing resources throughout the whole process. And this year, I’m totally overhauling my system of organization. We had a major “loose-paper and missing-supplies” crisis this year. As a result, I reworked and revised how I’ve doing everything. Where will books go, where will loose paper go, what folders will go with what subject, how will each subject be organized, how will the kids recognize their own supplies, what supplies will be shared, how will I be able to quickly and efficiently double-check to make sure books and supplies get back where they belong—I’m serious! I rethought everything. (And I’ll be sharing the final results when it’s finished.)

Bonus: Accommodating ADHD and Dyslexia

There is a difference between coddling a child and accommodating learning struggles. If one of my kids has an attitude or behavioral issue that does not necessarily stem from their difficulties, I will not coddle that behavior; I allow my kids to experience consequences of bad decisions. However, I do believe in accommodating if there are legitimate struggles. I my kids have some legitimate issues. For instance, we have always accommodated ADHD with short bursts of learning. I keep most subjects limited to about 15 minutes each. For my fourth grader, her longest subject is scheduled for 20 minutes. That means on a good day, when her attitude is right, she has no problem completing the assigned work in 20 minutes. On a bad day—well, yes, we have bad days that require further adjustments and natural consequences. For my sixth grader, 30 minutes is a good average for his major subjects. I arrange my schedule according to which children will need me most. This next year, that will be my kindergartener and dyslexic daughter. My oldest is not suffering from this arrangement; he’s old enough for the responsibility and, in my opinion, it’s part of his learning process to need less of me. My daughter, though fourth grade, requires more hand-holding than my other two; it’s a combination of her dyslexia and ADHD. She’s my “Dory,” and she needs some accommodations for her short-term memory struggles. (I also make accommodations to fill in her learning gaps.)

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to and what I’ll be wrapping up next month as well. By July, I hope to be posting pictures of me on the beach with not a single homeschool planning thought in the world!

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Loop Planning with file folders (for themes, topics, and unit Studies)

January 11, 2017Tracy

Some subjects, like math and grammar, can be pretty straightforward when planning. But other subjects that are more topic or theme oriented are a little harder to schedule with traditional lesson planning. For those subjects, I’ve found that I really like loop planning.

The idea of loop planning is that you plan the order rather than the timeframe that a lesson is completed. When you finish one theme or unit study, you pull out the next one. There’s no deadline or getting behind; you finish when you are finished.

For instance, I plan my Tapestry of Grace history this way. I have file folders for each history topic we want to cover. Book lists, project templates, notebooking pages, and all other pertinent info goes into the file folder. On my folder, I mark about how long I expect this topic to take, but it’s only a guideline. Some topics take longer than I expect, and some topics finish more quickly. Because I know I have this flexibility, I don’t panic when we take a little longer on a topic; I know it will work out by the end of the year. Also, because I’ve marked approximate lengths of time on my folders. I can make quick judgement calls. (Hmm. I said two weeks for Ancient Incas but we just spent 5 weeks instead of 4 in Egypt. I bet we can cover Incas in just a week.) Whenever we finish one topic, I pull out the next folder to complete.

Simple Steps to Loop Planning Unit Studies

Decide on a list of topics or themes to study.
Decide on a method of organization to compile your resources for each study (file folders, Pinterest boards, Evernote, whatever you like to use).
Decide on an order or arrangement of topics.

*(Optional) Decide on a rough time-frame for each unit or topic.

You can use loop planning for discipline subjects as well (math, spelling, etc.) And I will often default to loop planning whenever I can. If you want to attempt loop planning for all your subjects, here are a few suggestions.

Using Loop Planning for Traditional Subjects

Decide on the number of lessons you need to complete each week.
Set up a filing system for each week. (I love file folders and have a folder for each week.)
File the correct number of lessons for each week inside your file folder. (5 math lessons, 3 latin exercises, 1 spelling list, etc.)

Your done! Pull out the correct folder, finish it, and move on to the next folder when you are ready!

The loop planning method also works really well for creative subjects or extra-curriculars like art, music, or nature study. You can even arrange the subjects themselves to loop. Nature study follows art which follows music, etc. Plan language arts and math everyday, then loop plan history, science, art, etc. completing one or two of these each week.

There’s no end to how you can creatively use loop planning. But the major benefit is that there is no falling behind or meeting a deadline. You are free to enjoy your topic until you’ve exhausted it. You are free to work on it whenever time allows; some weeks you may have 5 days and others you may have 2 days. Loop planning allows for maximum flexibility.

While loop planning has not worked for every subject in our homeschool, a combination of traditional lesson planning and loop planning has worked really well for us. Find a combination that works for you—your personality as well as your homeschool style.

Have more questions or want a little more help on the topic of homeschool planning? Read more about loop planning, other methods of planning, and combining different methods to find your perfect solution in my free course “Planning your Homeschool.” Plus, get free downloads to get you started.

Click here to find out more!

5 steps to traditional lesson planning

January 9, 2017Tracy

For most people I know, lesson planning is the part of homeschooling that they despise. But I’m a nerd; I love to lesson plan and organize our year. And I have two methods for getting my ducks in a row: traditional lesson planning for subjects like spelling and grammar and loop planning for subjects that are more topic or unit study oriented. (We’ll tackle loop planning in my next post.)

I actually do a lot of my planning during the summer to help relieve some of the time pressure that lesson planning can create, so my school year just about runs itself during the actual school months. During that process, here’s how I break down our year and create traditional lesson plans.

5 Steps to traditional lesson planning

Think through vacation days and breaks your family likes to take. Do you want a winter break or spring break? When do you take family vacation? Will you have relatives visiting? Plot these times in your calendar first.
Set start and end dates. At this point, these are just rough estimates, you can always move these forward or backward as you define your year. But roughly, when do you want to start and end?
Calculate the number of weeks/days in your year. The traditional U.S. school year is about 180 days or 36 weeks. As a result, a lot of your curriculums will be designed for this time frame. However, depending on your state requirements, you can do less or more. Some families school year round; others finish up when the books are completed no matter if that is week 33 or week 48.
Divide your year into periods or terms (6 weeks, 9 weeks, 12 weeks). This step is optional. But it can be helpful to break your year into smaller increments: (1) if you plan on having report cards and grading periods, (2) if you are planning unit studies or themes throughout the year, (3) or if you just need to “eat the elephant” a bite at a time.
Divide the number of pages or lessons by the number of weeks in the school year. (The average school year is about 36 weeks.) The answer will be how much needs to be assigned each week.

From there, you can decide how you prefer to keep track of progress. You can write in the lesson numbers each day (but then, if there are sick days or spontaneous field trips, your planner is all messed up), write in lesson numbers for each week (a little more flexibility with this approach), or record how many lessons you complete each week (maximum flexibility, but you will need to double-check that you are completing enough to ensure you finish on time.)

I use a combination of weekly planning and recording. For some assignments, I chart what needs to be finished on a weekly basis. So each week, I fill this in (and never more than 2-3 weeks ahead of where we are, in case of the unexpected): “read pages 20-30” or “complete lessons 35-40.” For subjects that only need to be completed 2 to 3 times a week. I write the subject into my planner and then record the days we worked on those lessons. For instance: FFL (First Language Lessons) M W F; WWE (Writing with Ease) M W; WA (Writing Aids) F

Subjects like math, spelling, grammar, etc. lend themselves to this kind of planning best. The rigid structure of these subjects fits well with the rigid structure of traditional lesson planning. Creative subjects, especially those that are based on theme, topic, or unit study are often easier to plan using loop planning. Stay tuned for my next post for more info on this method.

Have more questions or want a little more help on the topic of homeschool planning? Read more about traditional lesson planning, other methods of planning, and combining different methods to find your perfect solution in my free course “Planning your Homeschool.” Plus, get free downloads to get you started.

Click here to find out more!

3 Benefits of Planning (and why I love my planners)

January 4, 2017Tracy

Life doesn’t always happen the way we plan it. And yet, there is something so comforting about having a plan. I love planning and planners, the old-fashioned paper planners, especially my Plum Paper Planners (see my review and a coupon code at the end of this post). And in spite of the fact that plans change, I’ve found a number of benefits to planning. Here are my top 3.

3 Benefits of Planning

Planning to Create Order Out of Chaos

Just like some people vacuum obsessively so that they can see the nice neat lines in their carpet, and some people just can’t think until their kitchen is clean, I love a nice orderly list of check boxes—the chaos of my life neatly arranged into categories and days of the week and orderly lists. The rest of my life may be in total disarray, but I’m good with that as long as my planner is neat and orderly. So what does that mean? Well, it means I must have no empty boxes at the end of the day. If I decided something did not need to be done, I put an X through the box. If I still need to do it, I put an arrow through the box and write the task into the next day. And if it’s done—CHECK IT OFF!

Planning to Remember

I’ve learned that the physical act of writing helps me to remember things in ways that the iPhone just can’t. No number of reminders and alerts will do for me what checking off a little box in a planner can do. I’m much more likely to remember an event I write into my planner than an event I enter into Google Calendar. Though I use Google Calendar, mainly to sync my husband’s appointments with mine, I have to write events into my planner if they are going to happen.

I also use my planner to remember what has already happened, a special afternoon with a friend, a fun memory, blessings of the day (1,000 gifts Ann Voscamp style), etc. In this way, my planner also becomes my journal or scrapbook, recording the events and memories and special notes of the year.

Planning for Perspective

Planning gives me perspective. I totally write in tasks I’ve already finished so that I can check it off. It helps me combat the feeling that I didn’t get anything done. Most days, I got a lot done, even if it wasn’t what I’d planned. Sometimes “rest” is on my planner. It’s something I need to do, and yet something that I often feel as though I can’t do (because I’m not getting anything done when I rest). I combat that with the power of the little check box. It helps me remember that I am still doing something important when I take the time to recoup. Then there are those days when, honestly, I didn’t do anything but parent. I write that in, too! I parented. I homeschooled. And maybe that’s all I got done. But that alone is doing quite a bit.

What I use (a Plum Paper Planner review)

For the last three years, I’ve used (and loved) Plum Paper Planners. They are cheaper than Erin Condren or Inkwell, comparable to the Happy Planner but with lots of customization options. With a variety of layout options, add-on sections, and cover options, I can customize everything about this planner, making it exactly what I need. In fact, you can choose any start month and add extra months if you want to use it for longer than 12 months. I’ve used Plum Paper Planners to plan my daily life, my homeschool lesson plans, and even to journal our food journey (tracking everything everyone eats and daily symptoms and behaviors). They are perfect for just about everything. Plus, the paper is amazing!

You can create your own cover, choosing from a range of colors, patterns, and designs; and you can personalize it with exactly what you want your cover to say. You can choose from a variety of add-ons: notes pages, to-do lists, checklists, budget planner, meal planner, fitness planner, etc. Lots of options! You can also choose from at least 6 different layout options, vertical and horizontal. My favorite is the ME option, which allows you to customize your own headings in your planner. {My personal planner is labeled Events, Projects, Tasks (plus 3 blank sections), and Blessings. My homeschool planner is labeled Reading, Tapestry (for our Tapestry of Grace material), Assignments, Meeting Times, Notes, and a couple of blank sections.} Not to mention, they are beautiful!

And as a special thank you to my blog followers, Plum Paper has provided a special 10% off coupon code for you all, good through March 31! Just visit their website and at checkout enter the code GRACE10 for your 10% off.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

I don’t always get to complete my well-laid plans: the unexpected happens in my life on a regular basis, and disorder is a constant, it seems. But the benefits of planning extend beyond the chaos that life can bring. At the very least, planning brings order and beauty to one small space in the messy disorder of my life. And I can live with that.

Take a look at specifically how I plan our homeschool: 5 Steps to Traditional Lesson Planning & Loop Planning with File Folders.

Keeping Up with Homeschool Grading: the Grading Center

November 23, 2016Tracy

One of the things I noticed last year, when I started evaluating how my time was spent, was that a huge portion of my “teacher time” involved tediously grading daily assignments. Personally, I felt that this wasn’t the best use of my time and opportunity with the kids; I wanted to be doing more actual teaching.

Since my kids are 3rd and 5th grade, I figured they were old enough to learn some self-checking and self-correcting in a few areas. So we instituted what we called “Grading Center,” and this year we added a little flair at the kids’ request: a sign, some stickers, and colored pens.

What Grading Center Is

At a certain time of day, one of us sets up the Grading Center at our dining table. This is a location that is out in the open and in clear view. The answer keys are set out during this time, as well as our sign, stickers, and pens; after assignments are graded, everything is put away again.
The kids grade only daily assignments: math lessons, map work, Latin worksheets, etc. I grade all tests and quizzes.
No pencils are allowed at the grading center, only our colored pens.
This is a time for them to notice what they’ve done wrong and attempt to understand the corrections themselves.
This is also time for them to build integrity and character. It’s a lesson in honesty, and doing the right thing. It’s a testing ground in a controlled situation.

What Grading Center Isn’t

It isn’t at any time unsupervised. No answer key ever leaves the designated location. And while I am not looking over their shoulders, I am close enough to see and notice things.
It isn’t without accountability. During our time to together, I quickly look over everything they’ve graded. First, I scan for errors. Their work is still easy enough at this stage that, at a glance, I can tell if they’ve done a decent job and can still easily catch any errors. Second, I ask if they’ve understood all of the corrections. Most of the time, they do. But sometimes there are some new math concepts or a confusing map skills question that requires a bit of explaining.
It isn’t encouraging temptation. I stress honesty and that it’s okay to make mistakes. Nothing they grade counts for an actual grade; I grade all quizzes and tests. Also, I’ve talked with them about telling me if they feel any temptation to cheat, that there is nothing shameful in struggling, but that I would want to know so that I could help them to avoid actually cheating. If at any time I felt one of my kids was being tempted in this way, we would make other arrangements.
It isn’t encouraging laziness. As a matter of fact, in many cases, I think it has encouraged careful work. It makes a much bigger impact for them to circle and mark their own careless mistakes than for me to mark it and merely tell them it was careless.

While this definitely isn’t a “one size fits all” solution, having a little help with the grading has made a huge difference in my day. It frees me up to be able to do more teaching than correcting. And it’s one step closer to making them independent learners. Just like having them help me clean the house teaches them character and responsibility, having them help with the grading has been a great training ground, too.

Are they always excited about doing it? Of course not, let’s not fool ourselves. But the stickers and neon pens do help.