Homeschool planning (radical unschoolers? Nothing for you here, LOL)

I'm still planning out the school year which means I'm in the midst of flipping through calendars & covering myself with sticky notes.

There are so many ways to organize things (& then there's just winging it - a fave of so many people), but I keep returning to the basics: figure out how many weeks you'll be committing to a formal education plan, take your curriculum & divide it (metaphorically*) into that many chunks.

And for us, I keep returning to three terms - like Oxford's Michealmas, Hilary & Trinity terms. Except Oxford's official terms are only 8 weeks long! Nowhere near enough time as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sticking with 3 terms of twelve weeks each. (the additional convenience of this is that 36 weeks x 5 days/week yields 180 instructional days, which is a pretty standard requirement in jurisdictions which have an attendance requirement. Not for me, here in BC, by the way. Homeschoolers here have no attendance requirement. BC homeschool laws are some of the best!)

Some curriculum will only last a term, some will span two terms, & some will take the entire year. Certain unit studies might only take a portion of a term - that's fine. Just plan it. In my house, if we don't plan it, write it down and schedule it, it has no hope in hell of getting done.

So, our term dates this year are:

September 20 - December 10; then a nice 3 week break to eat sweets & forget the miserable weather

January 3 - March 25; followed by a two week break to regroup & tinker with the curriculum plan one last time before the big push to the end

April 11 - June 30 (this is actually short one day as we end on Thurs here)


So, now that the year is nicely chunked up, you get a planning form like this for each subject.

Twelve Week plan for Fall term 2010

Take your curriculum, divide it into 12, 24, or 36 chunks & start entering the amount of work that needs to be done each week.
Like: Week #1 (week of Sep 20) Read Ch 1-3, answer Questions 1-20 on p. 45, begin Assignment 1.

Or you can use the same document with 5 columns divvied up on the right, giving you the ability to divide the week's assignment over the individual weekdays, to further help your students organize their time.

Make at least two copies of each subject's plan. One copy stays in the master planner binder (that's mine!). The other copy goes into the actual subject binder (or magazine folder - some subjects which are done in workbook format don't have binders & instead they live in a magazine box like this.)

Depending on your organizational style, you may then want to take those subject plans & write out daily plans. Or, you may just grab the binder/box each day & just do 'the next thing'. My students are always free to work faster, but I don't like them falling behind by more than a week or two. It's very hard to recover from long delays like that - & then you'll find yourself schooling year-round, whether you want to or not. (& I most emphatically do not!)

As for missing single days - a seasoned homeschooler says that she has started to just skip lessons. Missed Tuesday? Treat it like you would if you were away from school. You'd just have a quick peak at what you missed on Tuesday & carry on with Wednesday's work. The vast majority of curriculum has enough repetition in it that skipping an odd day here and there will not hurt. This way you actually finish curriculum on time, rather than finding yourself with a large chunk of text unfinished at the end of the year.


*I say 'metaphorically' because there is a "new" planning kid in town, which involves actually ripping apart texts and workbooks into the chunks and filing those for each day or week in file folders & putting them all in a big filing crate. Then each day, the student just grabs a file folder, does the contents, and submits back to the parent. Have a look at one super organized family's system here. This is essentially a spin off of the workbox/workdrawer system, except in the box/drawer system, most people just kept the texts/workbooks intact & shifted them over each week into the correct drawer. It works very well for many families; especially, I think, families with many children & children in elementary. Lots of work up front but during the actual week, it's just grab & go.

Other homeschool organization tools include a wealth of blank forms for schedules & lesson planning at www.donnayoung.org , as well as computerized planners such as Homeschool Tracker.

Happy planning!