Spiral Notebooks for kids work

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  • mrsmccardell
    Participant

    Does anyone use this?  I believe the idea is from Sarah at Amongst Lovely Things.  Each night you write their assignments for the day in their own personal notebook.  I love the idea but struggle with 2 things: 1-emerging readers 2-not too much independent work.  I don’t know what I would write in there that they could do on their own.  I am trying to get them to more independence but w/o reading on their own it’s proving to be a struggle.  I really like the idea of it for other home responsibilities/chores type tracking though.  Any thoughts?

    Wings2fly
    Participant

    I give my dc their own Excel schedule for the week.  This sounds similar to urthemom.com Joanne Calderwood and her book The Self-Propelled Advantage.  But I think she starts at second grade and works along side them that year, as they gradually become more independent.  As they are older, they begin to make the schedule themselves and even help choose their books, like in high school.  But you still give guidance and they are accountable to you.

    Tristan
    Participant

    I couldn’t keep up with writing their assignments out every night, just not enough time and energy.  We print out a weekly assignment sheet that I only have to edit a little each Saturday for the next week (updating what math lesson to do, or what stage of a writing project they are on).

    On the weekly assignment sheet they see what to do for each day of the week, and can cross it off.  So Math has a box for Mon, Tues, Wed, and so on.

    It works well.

    For emerging readers, consider teaching them to recognize the words of the subjects: Math, copywork, reading, etc.  Then print out a week or month of copywork so they always just do the next page/line, they do the next math worksheet in the book, and they get you for reading practice.

    mrsmccardell
    Participant

    Great answers, thanks!  Are the items listed only things they can do on their own or can it be combined with mom-needed things?  If combined, I’m trying to figure out how I would coordinate that.  Any thoughts?

    mommamartha
    Participant

    I use spiral notebooks to make a plan for each child the night before and keep a running record of completed work. They also each have narration notebooks for both written and oral narrations, minus the Bible narrations which are in a separate notebook which gets used year to year having all together.
    My planning generally takes 30-45 min, per night for 3 children once I’ve gotten my overall plan down.

    I hope this helps. blessings, Martha

    Tristan
    Participant

    We do all our combined work first in the morning and do NOT write it on our assignment sheets generally.  Why?  BEcause it makes their workday look shorter!  LOL.  So we begin with devotional, history, and science (except the high schooler, who does science with me later, so it is on her sheet).  Their assignment sheet will then list things like math, copywork, narrate to mom (or a sibling or a pet), typing, read 1 chapter in your literature book, read your scriptures, nature study, create a piece of art, cook something, do ____ for handiwork.  All of these would NOT be on the same day, just examples of possibilities.

    Melanie32
    Participant

    My daughter is in 9th grade. I sit down sometime during the weekend and plan a week’s worth of assignments and write them down in a simple planner. She checks them off as she goes. If plans change, it’s easy to cross something off or to switch it to another day.

    When she was younger, I had a weekly schedule on the fridge that just listed what subjects we did each day. That way she could look at them and see how she was progressing and what was left. Some subjects were easy-just do the next page or chapter. Others she had to come to me for her specific assignments.

    Weekly planning makes so much more sense to me than daily planning. That just seems like wasting too much energy. I have to pull out my daughter’s books to plan and doing that every evening instead of once a week would just be making more work for myself.

    When I was homeschooling 3 (ages 15, 13 , and 9), I printed off simple week at a glance planning pages and handled them the same way I do now. I only have 2 children but I homeschooled a friend’s son for one year.

     

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