We started our homeschool year in July… and stopped two weeks later because of illness. We cranked back up… only to fizzle out when my grandfather grew increasingly ill. Now, this week is filled with funeral preparations and a hurricane.
Planning for the unexpected
My first year of homeschooling, I wrote every lesson on my bright and shiny “official” lesson planning book. The good news is that I had enough common sense to use a pencil. The bad news is that my eraser was just a nub and my pages were worn with holes by the time I reached the end of the year.
Life happens. You have cool field trip ideas that pop up unexpectedly, friends who call for play dates, a hard hit from a virus, or countless other sudden stops on the calendar.
Is it possible to plan for the unexpected? Not really. But, you can create a lesson plan system that offers a lot of flexibility.
How to plan homeschool around life
This year, I tried a different approach and I am so glad that it is working perfectly, despite the constant stop-start of our first two months.
1) Get a Well-Planned Day Homeschool Planner. This calendar is built specifically for homeschooling and I love the space it gives for lesson plans.
2) Invest in a crate and stuff it with file folders. We have 180 days of school each year, so I have a manila file folder numbers for each day. Exact dates are not necessary. Once you have decided on your session lengths (step 3), you can divide the file folders, marking where you will take your breaks.
3) Look at your calendar and mark special events so that you can plan around them. Then, divide the number of school days into sessions, giving your family a week off between sessions.
In our family, we have school 5 days a week and our sessions look like this:
- 6 weeks of school followed by a one week break
- 6 weeks of school followed by a one week break
- 4 weeks of school followed by a two week break
- 4 weeks of school followed by a one week break
- 6 weeks of school followed by a one week break
- 6 weeks of school followed by a one week break
- 4 weeks of school followed by a short summer break
4) Mark your sessions on your calendar in pencil. The only purpose of writing this information is so you can keep a goal in mind for the flow of your year. Remember, this is in PENCIL.
5) Write out your lesson plans for each child and each subject on an index card. If you know how to create a mail merge in an Excel document, you can print all of these on one card. Have the day’s number as it relates to the number of days you want to have school, not the exact date, on each card.
6) File those cards as well as any printables and worksheets needed for that lesson in the matching file folder.
Having everything I need for each child in one folder makes filling our workboxes super simple and saves me a ton of time each week. Also, I have a problem with staying motivated. So, when January rolls around, I no longer have to worry about gathering materials for the second half of the school year. Everything is ready to go and I just need to stay in our routine.
7) For some curriculum like unit studies, printing the lesson plans on mailing labels is easier. Again, you can use a mail merge through Excel to make this easy. Keep the entire sheet of labels in the front of your Well-Planned Day Homeschool Planner.
8) Pull the corresponding label for each lesson and place it on your calendar to track your progress.
A tip for smaller families
If I only had one child for which to plan, I would still use this lesson planning method. However, if your choice of curriculum does not involve a lot of printables, I would skip the cards and file folders, going straight to the labels and Well-Planned Day Homeschool Planner.
hi, thanks for spelling it all out in such details. But I had to ask – what if the child is rather slow to ‘get’ the planned lesson/topic for certain week? Do you push the rest of the lessons to later to make way for more lessons on the particular topic? I can never estimate correctly how my child will respond with certain topics, how much work she needs on the topics and how long she needs to ‘get’ it. In the end I ended up having to put away materials that I overly prepared or rush to prepare more materials that are not enough. I tried the numbered folder and pushed the rest of the lessons to later when she is stuck. I ended up with a very thick folder which I am not sure when I will get to cover all.
I never rush. When it comes to mastering a subject, pushing forward just to try to get to the next day is not worth it. I don’t even move the material to the next folder. We just stay right there.
I like that you postponed the new material and I am not sure how to advise you except to say, it might be time to find a tutor on that problematic area. Sometimes, a child just needs a new face to make a concept stick.
My mother would remind me of this: When I was was learning to drive, she would take me out time and time again. I was always tense and just could not relax enough to learn what she was trying to tell me. Then, my father took me out and I passed the driver’s test the first time. A similar thing happened when I was learning to drive a stick-shift automobile. My mother could not teach me, but my brother was able to teach me what I needed to know the very first time.
Thank you for this post. I love your folder idea, and I need to copy it. I have been using the Well Planned Day planner for years, and I recommend it to every home school mom I know!
They are great planners, aren’t they? I am so thankful for their company and how they invest in homeschoolers. 🙂
thanks for the info! We are officially homeschooling our first year this year (K-5) and I have a blend of different curriculum, so I was wondering what would be the mose effective way to handle the lesson planning. I will definitely look into the well planned day planner. I saw it at Mardel book store, but didn’t get it. I will have to get one next time I go!
As usual you amaze me! Can’t wait to share this info w/ my local h/s group!
Thank you for showing us your system! And, thank you SO MUCH for mentioning small families… and you even mentioned ONE CHILD! I can’t tell you how many blog posts I read, great ones, that I have to ponder to make it fit our homeschool of one student. Not easy sometimes! Also she has special needs so I’ve had to invent a process that’s a mishmash of a few different planning methods. Still working on it and this is our second full year of homeschooling! 😛
You are so very welcome. My husband is an only child and I only had a brother. We are the largest family in our family so I am always aware of family-size. Glad that this helped you. 🙂
I think I really like this system, but can’t understand the part about putting the lessons on the cards and the labels. Might you be able to give me a call at 815.671.5830. I am holding a Moms Night Out and we are talking about planning tonight. I’d really like to share this information, but can’t explain it if I don’t understand it. I tried to send you an email on your website, but that doesn’t seem to be an option. Thank you for sharing the idea.
Oh, you are so clever! I use A Beka, Apologia, and Saxon so all of our work comes pre-assigned in numbered days which I’ve been popping into my regular daily tickler file. I love the ideas you have for the kids’ assignments on index cards and stickers, though. It’s always satisfying to find an idea that takes a system that’s already working well and kicks it up a notch.