See What's Coming Up

Okay, so I played around with the Organizer and this is what I have done in the past….

If you look at today’s plan, start by clicking on “show upcoming assignments” under each subject on today’s schedule.  Since it shows the next 5 assignments, that will give you more than a week’s worth for those subjects you don’t do every single day or where you don’t complete an assignment in one day, but at least you’ll have more than just one day’s worth of assignments.

Next, click on “show assignments not originally scheduled for today” at the bottom of today’s plan, then click on “expand all.”  That will show you everything you’ve possibly scheduled for next week.  If there is any subject you are not going to do in the upcoming week, just minimize that individual subject so it doesn’t print any assignments.  (Let’s say, for example, you only do poetry every other week, you would minimize that so it doesn’t print out at this point.)

Then, under each of the subjects you expanded, click on “show upcoming assignments.”  You can then click on “print” at the top and it will give you a couple of pages that contain the next 5 assignments for each subject.  It’s not perfect, but it’s usable as a visual because it does show the weekly overview of what days of the week subjects are scheduled.  You would have to mark the day(s) and/or date(s) next to each assignment on the printout, but at least it’s there to see.

I know that the SCM Team is always looking to tweak the Organizer as time permits, but changes are usually a big job, so patience on our part is probably greatly appreciated.  That said, if you make requests for things you’d like to see changed or added, they will usually put them on a wishlist for upgrades.

Finally, I came across a link to a blog post from a forum member that explains what I’ve just said but in video form.  As she states, it’s not a professionally produced video, but I think you’ll find it very helpful.  It’s from back in 2013, so the Organizer looks slightly different, but the principles behind it are the same.

http://todogoodthings.blogspot.com/2013/11/simply-charlotte-mason-organizer-weekly.html

HTH,

Sue

Thank you, Shana, for giving the CM Organizer a try. And thanks for taking the time to write some feedback. We love to hear about how people use the CM Organizer and what would make it even better for you.

Making a button to print a week ahead of time is more complicated than it sounds. We designed the CM Organizer to take your schedule one day at a time, so it’s always updating tomorrow’s plan based on what you accomplish today.

We sometimes compare it to one of those Pez candy dispensers: you tell the CM Organizer what books you want to use and then it just keeps handing you the next lesson so you can mark off what you got done. That gives you a lot of flexibility to change your plans on the fly. If you have to skip reading a book one day, your schedule picks up where you left off the next time that book is scheduled. If you double up and read two chapters instead of one, your schedule is adjusted for that change.

That makes it very flexible when you take your schedule one day at a time, but if you want to plan out exactly what you’re going to do for a week or a month, it’s hard to keep that daily flexibility while also giving you a plan in that much detail. If you need a more detailed plan, you can use the method described in this series to make your big-picture plan, then put that plan into the CM Organizer and allow it to flex your plan for daily life.

Sue mentioned that we like to update and change the CM Organizer. We intentionally move slowly with changes because we want to think carefully about how any changes will affect that fundamental feature of the CM Organizer of taking your school plan one day at a time. We do have ideas for making it easier to see ahead and plan your big-picture schedule, but because software development takes a significant amount of time to do to our quality standards, we prefer not to give release dates for any new features so that nobody is disappointed if we have to push things back.

I hope that’s a helpful look behind the curtain at our goals and how we approach adding new features. 🙂 If you have other questions or thoughts, we’d love to hear them. As Sue said, we do keep a wishlist of feature ideas, and we keep it updated based on the feedback we receive from everyone who uses the CM Organizer.

Jordan,

Thanks for all you do to make the CM Organizer a blessing for those who use it, Jordan. I’m considering using it again after a few years away from it, so this thread is helpful.

I did notice, though, that where you wrote “the method described in this series,” it leads to a “Sorry,…” message.

When I click on the highlighted part of your post, this is the link. https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/series/planning/

But, I get the no info message. Maybe I’m doing something wrong?  I’d like to read the series.  I will do a search, but thought I’d let you know what’s  happening.

TIA,

Becca<><

Becca, we recently updated that series on planning—originally posted many years ago—by combining all five parts into one big revised article. Here’s the new version: https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/planning-charlotte-mason-education/

Looks like we missed a link when we were making the old posts point to the new version. I’ll let Doug know so he can fix it.