Homeschool Planning 2016

School Planning!

Every August, I spend a good long week putting together homeschooling plans.  I go through the book shelves, last year's folders, notebooks, and workbooks purging and cleaning things out.  I like to work big so I make plans on butcher paper taking notes, writing down ideas, and structuring how I think the year might go and what materials/curriculum I might want to use.  I revamp chores and write a menu plan so the running of the household is restructured as well.  Once I know the direction I want to go, I type everything up and make it official.

By the time I am done, I have a detailed plan for Fall and an outline for the school year.  I always leave lots of room for modifications so we can find what really works.

This year was a bit tricky.  I was trying to fit in 2 hours of tutoring in Barton (Sawyer and Evi) and Foundations in Sound (Brighton and Glorielle) on top of our normal subject areas.  Oh my, where do I find an additional 2 hours a day?  What I ended up putting together was an independent loop activity where each child has a list of 5-8 items that they tackle one at a time, in order, working at their own pace, until they come to the end of their list and then they start over.  To this Looping List, I added 3 centers:  STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), Nature Journaling, and Art.  I spent days trying to figure out how to fit in extra tables into the playroom to set this up.  Our list also has "Fun" journals (structured independent learning assignments), Logic games (Dyslexia structured "games"), handwriting, typing, and workbooks (for Evi, Brighton, and Glorielle).  Honestly, I have no idea how this is all going to work out.  I go back and forth between thinking this is a great solution to making that 2 hour time block work or that this is going to be a rotating disaster LOL!  The Looping activities will be what the children do when they are not meeting with me for Dyslexia tutoring.

Our first STEM activity and our theme unit for the Fall is bridges.  We will be reading about and doing lots of engineering projects and constructing different types of bridges.  I am hoping we can fit in multiple field trips visiting bridges on the National Register of Historic places.  For our nature journal, we will collect things on our field trips and have them available to sketch and make observations.  For art, we will be studying Claude Monet (with his famous bridge and water lily paintings).

We also have Bible, math, grammar, quiet read, music practice, and read aloud time to fit in daily as well as our weekly activities outside the home.  We are doing piano lessons, AWANAS, science club, 4-H, and speech.  I am thinking about dropping co-op as it takes up so much extra time for me (planning and teaching) as well as almost 3 hours of time every Friday afternoon.  We are pondering adding a dance class for the girl's and I...more on that later.  Not sure where I am going to fit a crafty/art evening for myself in all this to make sure I have time to keep a hobby business.  This didn't work out so well last year.  We tried for Tuesday nights and despite Phil's best effort to give me that time, we both felt stretched too thin.    

The playroom is ready and I am just about set up for the school year.  I just need to type up our schedule and recording sheets.  

STEM, Nature Journal, and Art Journal tables.  

My desk and white board.  This space is also shared with my studio space and I hang felting pictures that I am working on.

Looking into the playroom from the entryway. 

School table and homeschooling bookshelf.

School table and supply shelf (all toys are now in the closet to prevent children from easy access).

Where we will meet whole group and where I will do Barton tutoring.

I expect a lengthy learning curve as we try and fit everything in and learn to work more independently.  I am really hoping that the children will enjoy the independence and hands on activities that we added so many of this year!

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