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Planning Help–Just needing encouragement??
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Hi all,
I’m wondering how you all plan out your year. I have always struggled with this, and up until now, have simply used a daily grid to record what work we accomplish, while keeping a general idea of the year in my head. That gave me an immediate idea of where we were at, as well, as where we needed to be the next day/week.
However, we are further behind where I think we need to be at this point with pregnancy, a new baby, my own physical challenges, and sickness that just seemed to compound over the last 2 1/2 years. I feel like I need to get a fuller look at what needs to be finished and have a game plan on how to accomplish that in a reasonable amount of time.
The thing is that as much as I like the idea of having lists and being organized, my brain shuts down when it comes to the actual work of putting those things onto paper (or computer program.) I just need some ideas maybe? Or helpful links or direction to go to even begin to wrap my head around how to organize the books and the lessons for 3 students, while actually doing school, keeping a home, and mothering all of my children (22 mon-11 years.)
I begin to feel so overwhelmed when I think of where we are at this point because of basically starting over with everything except for math and learning to read at the end of Oct, beginning of November. Really I could use prayer for peace and direction from the Lord on how to make this all work with the realities of my limitations.Have you read the blog series on Simply Charlotte Mason about Planning? This is the series I mean: http://www.simplycharlottemason.com/blog/series/planning/
It really is great and helps you get a big picture overview (for example, I can look ahead and see that my oldest will be doing American history and government in 11th grade, even though right now she is 9th grade. I know the general subject areas we plan to cover each year.) Then they help you break it down for the current year.
What I do is look at what we hope to cover for the current year – for example I planned a literature list for my 5th grade reluctant reader that introduces him to a variety of genres one book at a time. I started with 5 books/5 genres. If/when he finishes those, if we have time left in the school year, we will choose another few books. I can look at where he is at right now (on book 3 of 5) and see that he will for sure finish his 5 book list.
Another example – I look at my 5th, 4th, 2nd, and 1st graders and see we have 3 major science areas I want to hit this year: plants, human body, and animals. We’re using God’s Design for Science as our jumping off point but it really just guides me into topics that I can pull living books off our shelves or from the library. I don’t have a ‘we must cover every topic in the book’ plan. Instead I trust that we’ll explore topics and if they interest the kids we will linger there, while if they don’t catch their interest we will breeze on to the next topic and call it good.
It’s hard to juggle multiple ages and bounce between them, isn’t it?! I’ve felt pretty stretched this year juggling 5 official students, 2 preschoolers, a toddler, and now I have baby #9 here as well. I have to write the overarching topics or goals down and refer to them often so I can make sure we’re still aiming at the right target for each child. If I don’t have the big picture for the year jotted down (like my science example, that we want to hit plants, human body, and animals this year) I can easily forget!
I use Planning Your CM Education. I only use the book (I found both the book and the DVD used. My copies are the old edition.) So valuable.
The book basically walks you thru choosing what subjects you want to study; what books you’ll use to study those subjects; and then how often you’ll read those books. It has helped me so much! The book doesn’t tell you *what* to use – it guides you thru deciding *how* you want to use what you have.
Last year, I designed my own History course, using the Planning book. I wanted to do Ancients last year, without buying anything except a couple living books – and we did it! It did take several hours or planning, but I did all that at night, while sitting in bed. My husband slept beside me and the girls kept asking for drinks, etc. All while I scribbled on paper and typed on my laptop.
I am quite sure you could take a week off school, work on the planning you want to do (let the kids watch educational movies or do handicrafts or simply play), and in a week, have a plan in your head and on paper. When it comes to the nitty gritty detailed plan, you only need the details of what you want to do Now, so you can leave the planning of next term until you’re farther along in this term.
Take courage!!! If you want to, you can change your goals to match your life right now. (we did math! That means we did one days’s worth of school! Yippee!) Just keep educational play type activities around for the kids to do and do what you can of “real” school.
I read through Planning Your CM education ebook and the free curriculum guide each year before I start planning. Sabbath Mood Homeschooling also has some great planning posts on setting up a CM schedule. Another great source is the SCM Subject by Subject series.
Another thing that helps me is to plan one subject at a time. It’s very overwhelming to plan everything at once, but if you only do a subject at a time, it’s much easier. It usually takes me a couple weeks to get it planned (spending an hour or two after the kids go to bed on it). I write things out in my teacher’s planner (I’m a paper person). It’s non-dated, so I don’t have to worry about coming up with a schedule for our year at this point.
Also, I’ve found (as a busy mom) that it’s best if I have everything planned out. I like to write out which pages to read, CD tracks to listen to, painting to study, projects to do, etc. For some reason, if I have specifics planned out, I can run through the plans on autopilot. Otherwise if I just have Picture Study written on my plans, I start to panic about which picture we will be studying that day and waste precious school time trying to track down the right painting on the internet or in a book. It’s difficult enough keeping my kids attentive and out of trouble without being distracted about where we need to be in each book!
The only thing I don’t plan ahead are math lessons or some of our language arts. It’s so difficult to figure out how long a lesson will take my kids to complete, and we just do the next lesson, so there really isn’t a reason to plan ahead here. I just record what they did “after the fact” in our lesson plans.
Planning gets a little easier for me each year as I figure out what materials work best for us. When you start with a CM education, it’s best to start with just a few subjects and add the rest in over time.
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