Planning and Organization
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Did This Week, Month, or Quarter Get off Track? Get on Track ASAP
This week didn’t go quite right. The 8-year-old had a lot of rough moments, the 7-year-old was tired, and the 10-year-old started the week out great, but by Thursday, we weren’t crossing everything off. Our dishwasher broke. I decided today would be better spent fixing the dishwasher and giving everyone a break from mom bugging them about math and spelling. It was a weird week. We didn’t get through all that was planned. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong with our curriculum or our homeschooling style. It just means it was a rough week, and even though it’s been six months since my mother-in-law died, we’re still having a lot…
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How I Plan Part 1: Pacing the Year in Microsoft Excel
I will get back to what I’m using for 3rd and 5th grade, but I wanted to take a moment to share with you how I plan. Since I do this in multiple steps, I’ll share it in various posts. Once I’ve purchased my curriculum for the upcoming year, I like to put together a pacing guide for it so I know roughly what we’ll do when. This is handy for planning field trips and homeschooling-related travel. Figure out the school year. The first thing I do is figure out our school year. This year, we’re starting next week, in early July, to allow us space to travel in late…
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Working From Home While Homeschooling
When I started homeschooling my oldest, I was a single mom going to grad school. A year in, I left grad school and started my own business. I’ve been running that business (and others) now for 12 years. I know a lot of us have been thrown into homeschooling & facilitating distance learning at the moment. It’s hard to balance it all. I have a confession: the interior of my house looks like it’s a disaster site, and to be honest, I probably won’t be fixing that until this weekend. Balance is hard – even when you’ve been doing it for a while. Know Your Priorities If everything is a…
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Overview of the Homeschooling Planning Tools I Use
I’m joining in the Timberdoodle Blog Hop again today, and I wanted to talk about planning. I’m a big fan of planning. I feel like even if I don’t follow the plan exactly, if I have a plan, that’s a huge boost to getting things done. It helps to eliminate the risk of decision fatigue. There are lots of great tools out there for doing this, and perhaps at another time I’ll do more detailed reviews of some of the options. For now, though, I want to give an overview of what you can use to plan your homeschool. Paper Planners There are many different paper planners out there –…
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How to Get Started Planning Your Homeschooling Year
I’m a big fan of lesson planning. I know, I know, there are many people out there who do not enjoy the planning process, and many balk at it. I find that planning is a key component of having a successful year and combating that malaise we get when the excitement of new curriculum wears off. It helps to ensure that your child is having all of her or his educational needs met. The best part of planning: You can always change things if they’re not working out. After a couple of years, you’ll have a good idea of what works for your family and what does not work for your…
