Welcome back to another edition of Thirsty Thursday with Joy at FiveJs!
Plan a whole year? Yep! That’s my hope anyway. This last year was a little more bumpy than in years past. Now, I have four little angels to be mindful of, my preschoolers are getting into some more ‘meaty’ topics, my baby is ready to be taught a few basics and it just seems like I need to stand back and look at the whole year instead of planning a week at a time.
Here’s my plan: (Yes, I have a plan to plan. Mock if you will.)
- Plan the days-on and days-off calendar
- Print out necessary worksheets
- Gather a supplies list for the whole year and make *hopefully* one shopping trip
- Gather all online videos, online games, crafts, hands-on projects together in one binder, organized by unit and day
- Create this year’s awards/incentives program
- Create a list of books needed from the library for each month
There’s so much more I want to do, but those are the biggies.
The Old Schoolhouse Planner that I have includes ALL the forms and lists that I could possibly need, which will greatly cut down on the amount of work that I’ll need to do.
I’m sure there will be little tweeks at the year progresses but I think this will really help us get off on the right foot once our “school year” starts.
So, I’ll be taking a week or two away from the blog while I plan. I’ve asked some great ladies for a guest post or two and I also stumbled on a resource which provided free articles about homeschooling. I’ve hand-picked quite a few that will be perfect for this blog and I can’t wait for you all (in my head, I said y’all!) to read them.
Anyone else planning an entire year at a time? I’d love to hear your advice and stories – maybe it will help me avoid a pitfall or help me to implement something I hadn’t thought of.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Our first year of homeschooling I only planned a little bit at a time too. And then I got Homeschool Tracker and I was able to sit down and plan the year out all at once. Boy, what a difference that made! I LOVED it!
As you said, it still needed to be tweaked a bit, but my Sunday evenings were MUCH less hectic after I made that change.
Our first year I only had one and I planned by unit study. Now in our 11th year of homeschooling I plan out the whole year and even have many things gathered into plastic bags so that I will know where everthing is when I get to them.
Blessings,
Dawn
I don’t think it’s weird at all to plan the whole year. Just make sure you make the plan easy to edit or you’ll drive yourself crazy with all the dates wrong.
That’s a project I’m dreading, but with 5 kids, two in highschool, I have no choice. I’ll probably plan only the first trimester in detail, though. The other two I’ll plan later on, each at one time.
I’m looking forward to hearing how the planning went for you