Let's talk planning out the year and scheduling

My plan this year is to type up our entire year, in planner format.  However, I’m only going to print 6 weeks at a time.  That way I can make changes as we go.  If a curriculum isn’t working or we need to schedule it at a different pace, I can easily change it on the computer, without having to re-print an entire year’s worth of changes!  I plan on gathering materials & resources, as well as printing/copying pages needed, for those 6 weeks at this time.  Library books will have to be checked out 1-2 weeks ahead of time.

The SCM Organizer is another popular option. I know there are several moms on these boards who use it.  We’ll actually be using Memoria Press’s interactive planner, but it’s not really set up for Charlotte Mason subjects, so I don’t think it would be a good choice for you.

What I’ve done is make a grid in Excel for each subject and filled it with the lessons I want to complete each term. Before each term I’ll review all the lessons we’ve got coming up in each subject, and make notes on the grid if there’s something I’ll need to prepare for or borrow from the library. It’s fairly simple, but it lets me get a birds eye view of what the entire year looks like. Also, I anticipate bumps in the road and try to schedule some “catch-up” days at the end of each term. Then on Sunday afternoons I copy and paste from each subject’s grid onto a master grid/list that I print out to work from that week.

This master list has family subjects as well as individual subjects for each child – it lists absolutely everything I want to get done that week, and I just check off each lesson once it’s done. As long as everything gets checked off by the end of the day on Friday, I don’t care if Monday’s science lesson was completed on Monday or if we didn’t get to it until Thursday – I don’t move it around on the list, I just leave it on whatever day I originally had it listed and check it off once it’s complete. If by chance we don’t get some things done, I add them onto the list for next week.

The best part of doing it this way is that once we get to Friday afternoon, I’ll compare the master list that’s still on the computer to my printed master list (on which I’ve checked off what we actually accomplished.) I add any notes or extra things we did to the computerized list, and then I save it and that’s our official record for the week!

Not sure if this will work, but I’ll give it a try! Here is my master list for week 3 from the last school year. I would fill this out on Sunday evenings and print it to work from the following week. For subjects where we just “do the next thing” for 10-15 minutes, like math, copywork, Latin, and reading, I don’t plan ahead of time what we’ll do – I would just leave it blank, pencil in what was accomplished each day, and then type it onto this list on Friday, to save for record keeping.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/88ibo0jdbwxfyal/Example.xlsx?dl=0

Here is what I’m going to use for this school year,  now that I’ve got my 4 year old tagging along. I will just print this double-sided and work from it. The blank area at the bottom of the Family Subjects page will be where I will record any notes for the week (such as extracurricular activities or field trips.) When my 4-year-old is older (and once I add my youngest into the mix) I’ll have a page for family subjects and then a separate page for each student’s individual studies, so my master list for the week will be two pages front and back.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/55dry667rvrdtng/Example2.xlsx?dl=0

Finally, this is what I would do for each term in each subject. Since we only do science 2x/week, I’ve got it separated into blocks of 2 lessons. I’ll just copy the text from two boxes and paste it onto my master list.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1x3idq8t2kqbid/Example3.xlsx?dl=0

I hope this gives you a good idea of what I’m talking about! Feel free to use my example to create a list tailored to your needs!

It doesn’t take me long, because I fill out the individual subject plans (e.g. Science T1, Science T2, Science T3) over the summer. When I do those it might take an hour per subject, maybe a bit less? I basically fill them out using the table of contents in the book we’re using, making sure we get to all of the chapters/lessons. I guess it’s kind of the same as printing out the table of contents and crossing things off as we do them, but this way I can get a bird’s eye view and see how much needs to happen each term.

If I get all the subject plans completed over the summer, then on Sundays during the school year all I have to do is copy from the subject plans and paste to the weekly plan, and that takes all of 2 minutes. Then I just quickly flip through the books/lessons we’ll work on that week to familiarize myself with the content, and I’m ready for Monday morning!