Happy to be at Home is asking for homeschooling posts during the month of August. My participation in this has been less than stellar, but I am not sure why. I love homeschooling, planning, books, paper, pencils, highlighters… I am a school nerd. As a kid, I would come home from school, gather the neighbors and then play school on our back porch for hours. I would even give out homework to my students!
Now I am in a homeschool planning funk! I need to start planning my year. I have written down my curriculum, ordered almost all of it, but can’t seem to get motivated to actually start planning. It took me two weeks to figure out our calendar for the year.
So since I can’t think of anything inspiring and uplifting to share with you about homeschooling I have decided to bore you to tears with my homeschooling “to do” list. I am hopeful that maybe if I post it on my blog I will be inspired to actually start doing some of the things on the list. As I am thinking of all the things I need to accomplish before we start school, one thought keeps coming to mind. At the convention this year many speakers talked about their husbands giving them a week or weekend alone to plan for the upcoming year. This sounds great, but do people do this in real life? I am trying to think of where my husband could take six kids for even a day while I stay at home to get organized. If you are one of the lucky women who has this planning time would you mind sharing how it is done? Where does your husband go, or do you leave? And if you leave where do you go? I would love some practical suggestions on how to make this happen.
My “to-do” list for homeschooling planning/ preparation:
- Fill out and turn in all forms to our umbrella school
- Finalize curriculum choices
- Order remaining books
- Make reading lists for each child for the year
- Begin watching IEW videos and planning for the course
- Plan, make worksheets and notebooks for science (Exploring Creation with Zoology 1)
- Create daily schedule
- Choose books for 9th grader to read for bible
- Lapbook prep
- Create/ print out grade sheets for first semester
- Copy/ print misc worksheets
- Create tests for TLP
- Familiarize myself with curriculum
- Take kids back to school shopping (Thanks Laura for this awesome idea!)
That is all I can come up with for now, as I was typing I decided I should stop talking and start doing!
Hopefully next week I will have made a dent in my list as school starts in less than three weeks!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m right with you. I have all the books except math (the ones I picked out six months ago!). I have a school table stacked with non-school junk. I have no motivation, even though we only had houseguests for 2 weeks instead of 4 this year.
A weekend to plan…not likely around here.
Here’s my to do list (in the spirit of writing things to jump start the “doing” part):
Order math books.
Open chemistry book and start reading it.
Figure out how much Church history we need to cover each week.
Photocopy aviation poetry for poetry unit.
Find my high school poetry analysis book in basement.
Stop worrying about high school co-op (it will happen…oh happy day!) and think about August 25.
Print out weekly log sheets for summer and fill in son’s Philmont hike hours for PE. Same for daughter’s dance camp and VBS service hours.
Sign up daughter for altar server training.
Pack for 2 trips that will take place before school starts.
(You can stop laughing now, Toni!)
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Okay, about that husband and 6 children thing while you organize and plan… take a trip to Florida, you go to your parents to organize and plan and the husband and 6 kids go to your in-laws until you are finished. Hey, someone’s gotta do it. Then everyone leaves refreshed and ready to get started on the new school year!!! YEA!!!:)
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I am in the process of getting all my things together.. I too need to stop worrying about it. I know that I will be okay
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I tend to not plan or schedule a whole lot. I am such a loser. I will usually REBEL against my own plans. I know. So silly. So I have a loose idea in my head of what I would like to accomplish, and go from there. Last year I was so proud of myself I made a schedule and stuff. Didn’t last. But we finished most of our work early anyhow
I do have to write down all the books I want though. If I don’t I will forget to order something or forget to get it out!
I am not keen on starting just yet either. maybe it is the weather this year.
Oh and the only times I ever get away from my kids/house is when I go to Scrap Camp. My dh stays home with the 4 girls. We usually have 6 kids running around total, with my nieces…
Does that help? 
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I am queen of the procrastinators! My sister even gave me a “Procrastinators Anonymous” card! To break this habit, I force myself to do a little bit of homeschool prep every week in the summer. I may do a few lesson plans a day, put up a bulletin board one day, shop for supplies over several days. I have found with homeschooling that if I leave everything to the end, I will start the year very frazzled — which I hate! I thrive on organization, which greatly conflicts with my procrastinating tendencies.
Since I crave peace, I’ve chosen to be as organized as I can, even if it is just a little bit every day or two. What a blessing of peace and serenity this has brought to my life! On that note, school starts in 4 days (yikes!), and I have plenty left to do!
Finish re-doing chore cards
Finish 2 bulletin boards
Write out words for verse and song for yearly theme
Hang world map (studying 4 wars this year!)
Hang banner for good papers area
Move timeline
Have boys clean out desks
Make a few freezer meals (this goes a LONG way toward the peace thing!)
As for the weekend alone, may you could do 2-3 mornings/afternoons alone. Maybe hubbie could take the kids to the park on Sat. for a few hours. Maybe you could leave (and go to Starbucks) and take a few teacher’s manuals with you to get you started.
Hope this helps!
Melissa
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I really admire all each of you are doing. Hang in there!
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I would like to do more lapbooking, notebooking. We did one thing last year to see how we liked it, and my oldest really did enjoy it. So I want to plan to do more of those. I would love some great resources. She also loves making things on poster board.
I remember one year when I was in school we had to plan a trip using a map. I loved it, but can’t for the life of me remember what we did and how we did it. I’ll have to research this more, as my daughter loves maps.
Wow! that would be nice to have an entire weekend to plan for school…with no one around.
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