Keeping Everything On Track While Homeschooling

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Are you a planner? Or do you just go with the swing of things? I will admit I'm a planner. I love to have everything planned out when it comes to or homeschooling lessons. Each year, around March, I start planning for the next year. I spend the next few months planning the courses, books, and projects the kids will use and work on.

For me planning is fun. We don't use an all-in-one boxed curriculum. Years ago, when we started homeschooling, I never found a set curriculum that worked for us. Since nothing seemed to work for I use, I set out and created our own. I've been doing for so long now that it just second nature to me. I love the freedom it gives me and the kids.

So where do I begin? 

First, I start with the basics. Math, English, and Religion. These three are a must and we don't change too often in our course with these subjects. I consider them the easy subjects to plan. History and science are next. This is were I'm always looking for ideas. Science I'm always looking for a curriculum that the kids will enjoy and in an area of science they want to learn about. I have two science loving kids, so this subject is a big deal for us. For history, we use a classical approach. History takes a lot of planning! Books, projects, movies, reports, etc. all need to be planned out. This takes the longest to plan and I tend to over plan...I'd recommend not doing that. It can be rather stressful if you plan too much.  After planning the core subjects, I start on the electives. Here is were the kids have some say in what they want to study. I always try to include a few classes they want to learn and are of interest to them. Once everything is decided then I move on to planning the lessons and getting everything organized.

To plan out my lessons this year, I am using an online planner from Homeschool Planner. In the past, I used to use spreadsheets to plan everything and then I'd copy the lesson onto a paper planner. I would copy a few weeks at a time. I never wrote the lessons too far ahead or I'd end of having to erase and change the schedule when we missed a lesson or fell behind in a subject.

Now that the kids are older, I wanted a easier way to plan, a way to keep track of their grades, and a way to create a transcript for them. Homeschool Planet allows me to do that. Not only can I plan their lessons, I can add outside activities to the schedule and I get email reminders of everything planned for that day It's made life so easy! The more I use it, the more I like it.






Till Next Time, Monique