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What did the very organized homeschool mom’s first day of school look like? Were all the desks cleared off? Were all the pencils sharpened and in neat little pencil holders? Were all the lesson plans ready, printed off and sitting on each child’s desk? Yes, yes, and yes. But the answer to the first question is that the very organized homeschool mom had a panic attack about everything not being completely perfect! Yikes! Okay, a side note here: the downside to being very organized and somewhat of a perfectionist is that I tend to be quite tense and get stressed out easily. Whew! There’s another true confession for those of you who are keeping track of those.
Oooo, here comes another true confession: I was so busy trying to make sure that everything was organized and just right that I didn’t take any pictures on the first day of school (except for the annual one of the kids standing outside the front door with bare feet). So, let me go reorganize their desks, take pictures and then I’ll add those here. I can honestly say that, yes, my desk looks like this all the time! There are a few exceptions, for instance, I have papers and books out while I grade and do lesson planning. Oh, and I usually have a bottle of water on it. The kids’ desks, on the other hand, do not usually look like this. Good grief, is this three true confessions in one blog post? I’d better quit before I get any further behind! How was your first day of school? Was everything as organized as you would like for it to have been? Or did you spend the day trying to find the workbooks and keep the kids on task? Leave me a comment letting me know how your first day of school was. P.S. - For some reason I cannot get my pictures to upload here. Sorry! You'll just have to imagine how pristine they are :-). |
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Review for TOS Planner: Schoolhouse Rocks! The Schoolhouse Planner, that is. Binder queens, this one’s for you. The Old Schoolhouse claims they incorporated ALL requests for EVERY possible type of homeschool and home planning forms. At 247 pages, it’s possible that they succeeded. TOS recognizes both the home and the school parts of a busy homeschool mom’s life. Many home organization charts and planning schedules are included, from the daily and weekly cleaning charts and grocery shopping lists to seasonal guides to things like gardening schedules and vacation budgets. The school-type forms encompass everything for beginning homeschoolers and veterans, for preschoolers and high schoolers. It doesn’t matter what type of schooling ideology you espouse, there are forms to suit you. Many bonus, encouraging articles and links are included as well. Since it’s in a digital format, you only print out the forms you need, thereby saving paper and shelf space. The best part is that you can personalize every form (including the calendars) before printing it out. Just a few caveats to be noted: First of all, The Schoolhouse Planner is a memory hog. When I had it open, even in the background, all my other computer programs ran much more slowly than normal. Perhaps that is more a comment on the quality of my computer, but I thought it a noteworthy point. Second of all, the organization was somewhat confusing for online use, even though there is a table of contents. The first part of the planner is set up with monthly calendars followed by themed essays and helps. That’s great if you want a surprise topic every month. It’s not so great if you want an overview of all the different subjects available. An alphabetical listing by subject would be much more user friendly in my opinion. Overall, The Schoolhouse Planner is a great value at only $39. In addition to the actual planner, you also receive 19 FREE gifts in the form of e-books and downloads from a variety of notable homeschool companies. These forms are a great addition to any binder queen’s notebook. They’ll also give a boost to anyone who wants to become more organized. As a lover of organization and planning, I heartily recommend investing in The Schoolhouse Planner. See more details and order here. Review for digital version of TOS magazine: The digital version of The Old Schoolhouse magazine combines two of my favorite things: a full-featured magazine and computer convenience. Digital TOS is exactly the same as paper TOS, so you’re not missing out on anything. In fact, you’re saving trees and making archiving favorite articles much easier. It’s a real flip-page magazine with clickable links (a plus), not a pdf file. There are many product advertisements and reviews so you can keep up with what’s new in the homeschool curriculum world. 12 pages of reader comments satisfy your desire to see your name in print and to hear what other real homeschool moms like you are thinking. The encouraging articles cover a wide array of topics with something for everyone. All of this is from an unabashed Christian point of view. Quite a few authors are household names (at least in the homeschool community), which lends credibility. Still not sure if it’s for you? You can get a FREE peek at a past issue to check out the buzz. At $16.95 for four quarterly issues, plus 19 FREE gifts (e-books and downloads from excellent vendors), the digital version of the TOS magazine is a great deal! See more details and order here. |
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Pssst . . . wanna know a secret? I forgot to finish up some paperwork (including a science grade) for this past school year!!! YIKES! It's true. My "Mom's Everything Binder" didn't get completely cleaned out in June. And the science grade didn't get recorded because I was waiting on lap report grades from someone else (of course I've had those for nearly a month now). So, there you have it: even a really organized homeschool mom ocassionally has an "oops." Guess what I'll be doing today? Do you have an "oops?" If so, go get it done and then let me know I'm not the only one out there who sometimes misses the mark. |
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Remember the teacher’s planner you were going to research and purchase the other week? Its purpose is not just to look pretty on your shelf or on your computer’s desktop. It’s time to pull it out and start using it, or to figure out all the features it has if you’ve purchased an e-planner. Yes, I mean right now (well, after you’ve finished reading the blog post)! If you wait until the day before you start school (or worse yet, the first day of school), you’ll get so befuddled that you’ll be tempted to give up on it. Start now so you feel comfortable with it by the beginning of the school year. First of all, plan—at least roughly—your starting and ending dates for the school year. Be sure to incorporate holidays and other dates you know you’ll be taking off from official academics. Make sure you have the required 180 days. It’s okay if these dates fluctuate during the year—really—at least you’ve got a framework. The next step is to write all these dates into your paper planner or to program them into your e-planner. The nice thing about e-planners is that they will calculate the number of days for you and it’s much easier to change dates if something unexpected comes up, and it will. This feature comes in handy towards the end of the year when the kids (and you) are getting antsy for the last day of school. Many states require you to keep and submit a yearly attendance log, which will be a breeze once you start using your e-planner. No more counting out days and trying to remember if you did school on Columbus Day or not. If you recall, in my previous two posts, I discussed long-range and mid-range planning. Most teacher’s planners have these types of planning incorporated, so pull yours out and take a look. If you accepted the previous mission, you already started some long- and mid-range planning. Your jobs for this week are to make sure your dates for the coming school year get plugged into your planner and to input (or write) your long- and mid-range goals into your planner. Leave me a note and let me know how you’re coming along with your planning. I’d love to hear from you! |
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Currently I’m engaging in mid-term planning by working on my youngest daughter’s Bible, history, and reading schedule for this coming year. I start by making a chart in Word with a column for each subject and a row for each of the 36 weeks. This year’s chart has 5 columns: 1) card number (we use the history and Bible cards from Veritas Press), 2) title of each history card, 3) supplementary resources (we’re also using the Explorers History Pockets and Colonial Life from History Through the Ages’ Time Travelers series), 4) reading (living books that go along with each week’s history subject), 5) and title of each Bible card. The key is to figure out about how many weeks a particular book will take to read and to put each book on the schedule in approximate chronological sequence. I am also looking at the “fun projects” and putting those on the schedule to coordinate with each history topic. I don’t consider all this planning boxing myself in; I consider it detailing all the possibilities so that we have many choices during the school year. If we don’t read every book on the list or complete every project, that’s okay. While this may seem like a lot of unnecessary work, it makes my planning during the year go much more smoothly. When I do my bi-weekly planning, I simply look at my chart and decide what to do each day. That way when we get to the end of the year I don’t discover a really cool project that we forgot we had or discover a book about an explorer when we’re studying the Civil War. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choose a subject and start setting up your fall schedule for it. |
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The key to a smooth start of the school year is to begin planning early. Yes, I know it’s only July, but the end of August (or even the beginning of September) comes quickly. In order not to feel overwhelmed the weekend before I plan to start school with the kids, and in order not to feel like I’m completely missing my summer vacation, I do a little bit of planning at a time. Obviously this is an unnecessary step for those of you using a prepackaged curriculum, but for those of you using a combination of curriculums or making up your own, this will save many prep hours during the year. There are several types of planning that make homeschooling go more smoothly: long-range planning, mid-term planning, and short-term planning. I will plan to cover each of these in more detail in another post, but I will give a summary now. Long-term planning involves choosing curriculum for each child that matches her learning style and will be used for several years in order to have continuity in each subject. It can also involve planning which science classes and which literature periods will be covered during the four years of high school (or grade school). Deciding which method of homeschooling (classical, Charlotte Mason, traditional, eclectic, etc.) suits your family best falls under long-term planning, too. Mid-range planning is the focus of the rest of this blog entry. It focuses on planning several months ahead and/or using the summer months in between grade levels to plan for the coming school year. Mid-range planning involves breaking the school year down into quarters (or whatever units you use), then months, then weeks. I plan which books will be read when and which projects go with which history and science units. I also look at every textbook, workbook, and living book we’ll be using to see approximately how many pages and chapters need to be done every quarter, month, and week. It saves time when I do my short-term planning during the school year, and it also helps me keep the children on track to finish each book by the end of the school year (but not three months early, unless we want to do it that way). Short-term planning, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, involves planning specific pages, chapters, lessons, and projects for each day of our school week. I have found that it works best for me to do this once every two weeks. Doing it every week tends to feel cumbersome and never-ending. If I do it only every three or four weeks, we tend to get out of sync too easily by an unexpected field trip or illness. It may take you a few tries to figure out what timing works best for you, but you will be much more relaxed throughout the school year if you take a little bit of time now to do so. Many tools exist to help you with all this planning. You can go to a teachers’ supply store or a homeschool convention and find many different types of paper planners. If you like to have a physical notebook in your hands, this is the way to go. Take the time to choose the style that will best suit your needs: large family, unit studies, high school, and many others. When I used paper planners, my favorites were these two: The Home Schooler’s Journal, published by Fergnus Services Foundations for Learning, and Homeschool Teacher’s Plan Book, by Grace Publications. If you’re computer savvy and don’t want extra papers cluttering your desk, then check out the wide selection of electronic planners. Some are web-based, meaning that your computer has to be connected to the internet in order to access them. Some are can be downloaded from the internet and some can be purchased on a CD-rom to download onto your computer yourself. TOS has just introduced a brand-new homeschool planner that promised to have everything. I can’t wait to check it out! There are a few freebies online, so if you’re trying to decide whether or not planning on the computer is for you, that’s a good place to start. Your goal for this week: purchase a homeschool teacher’s planner. Leave me a note on your search for the perfect planner and which one you chose and why you chose it. Coming next: A How-To Example of Mid-Term Planning |
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No, I’m not talking about schooling year-round. I realize that some families find schooling year-round to be a viable option for many reasons, but my purpose here is not to discuss the merits of either a traditional school calendar or schooling year-round. Our family has chosen to school according to a more traditional school calendar, although we do make it work for us and not the other way around. However, I don’t want my children to forget everything during their summer break. A few times a week, I have them work on some of their weaker skills for a short period (say, half an hour or two reading selections). We do math speed drills, typing games, and reading comprehension exercises. Of course, you can choose whatever skills your children need to work on. I let the kids do more of their drilling on the computer and try to incorporate more learning games as well. Early in the summer, I make summer reading lists. I base the lists on their current reading levels, books that go along with the past or coming year’s history, and recommended books from a variety of sources (my favorite lists this year came from Veritas Press). Every time we make a trip to the library, the kids must choose several books off my list (and read them first) and then they are free to choose several fun books. Summer school also includes educational field trips, library programs, crafts, and learning other life skills that we somehow don’t have time for during the school year. Homeschooling isn’t just about workbooks—it’s about a lifestyle of learning. See, that’s not so bad! I don’t label what we do “summer school,” but just call it sharpening our skills. You can call it whatever you want, but the purpose is the same: to keep kids in the learning mindset. Next time: Summer scheduling for a fabulous fall. |
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I’m baaack! Yes, the suitcases are put away; yes, the dirty clothes are all washed; yes, the sand pails and towels are cleaned up and stored. The pictures are even off my camera and onto the computer. What?! Already?! Yep. How? Day one: unpack all suitcases to either hampers or drawers, as appropriate; put suitcases away; empty coolers and food bags. Day two: store coolers in shed and start laundry, make menu and grocery lists. Day three: continue laundry, go grocery shopping, clean and store beach toys, mats, umbrellas, etc. Day four: finish extra laundry, transfer pictures, make sure kids have finished unpacking and putting away items from their car/toy/book bags. Day five: sort pictures for printing and upload to internet, make lists for coming week. Done! Next project: have my kids produce something that looks educational from our vacation. We went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and spent most of our time playing in the ocean and sunning ourselves on the beach. Doesn’t sound very educational, does it? But, do you know the composition of sand? Do you know why there are tides? Neither did we, until we visited the So, with a bit of planning and effort you can have a well-organized house after your vacations as well as before it. I say that it’s an effort because I recognize that it would feel easier (for a while) to dump all the suitcases and sand pails on the living floor for a few weeks; however, the sooner things are back to normal, the better you’ll feel, trust me! |
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. . . for vacation, that is. I won't be posting for the next 10-12 days, just so you know. Please, please continue to leave comments and I promise I'll get back to you as soon as I can!
Current confession: let others know ahead of time when you won't be available.
Outer Banks, NC, here we come! |
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Yes, I even organize my relaxation time! I am that neurotic. Really. Just ask my husband, who’s been trying to get me to relax for years. But even homeschooling families need a vacation.
Seriously, organization is the pathway to real relaxation. Once the details are in place, then I don’t have to worry about them and I can be at ease. I’m not running around trying to find sun block or hats or beach towels. I’m not stressed about where we’re headed or how to get there; it’s already worked out. Snacks? No problem. Car activities? Right in that bag. (Better yet, get your kids to pack their own small traveling bags with quiet games, books, and stuffed animals.) What’s my secret? Lists. When something pops into my head, I write it on the appropriate list. I usually have several lists running concurrently for different purposes. By spending a little bit of effort ahead of time writing lists, I can avoid the frustration of forgetting important items. The vacation list can be started at any time – the earlier the better. When I’m ready to pack for a trip, out comes my list. I check things off as they are packed. This method also allows me to pack more quickly since I’m not wasting time trying to remember what else needs to be brought. A plethora of websites offer free packing lists for various types of trips and travelers. Here are a few of my favorites: http://honeymoons.about.com/cs/travelplanner/a/Packing_List.htm, http://www.flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_PackingList.asp, http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29190.asp. Another detail that I like to organize ahead of time is the itinerary. Two to four weeks before our departure date, I go online to map out the roads we’ll be taking. Often, I check several mapping websites as well as a regular road atlas to make sure that we’re going the most direct and the most easy route. I print out the directions and map and store them in a desk drawer or with a pile of stuff already slated to go on the trip. I also spend time looking for and planning activities at our chosen destination. I look at the costs, additional travel time required, and educational values. While this may seem restrictive to some people, it’s really not. It gives us choices of many activities that we could possibly do. We don’t do everything I’ve planned and sometimes we do things I didn’t plan, but at least we’ve got a starting point. Since travel time is excellent reading time, I often bring material regarding the places we’ll be visiting. This helps my kids to get an introduction to and historical background on what they’ll be seeing and it’s a great way to get kids excited about unknown places. One last tip for organizing a vacation: start early. I usually start putting things in a neat pile in the guest room (or my room) a week or two before our planned vacation dates. I do this as I remember things that aren’t on my original list or as I look at my list and see things that could be set aside ahead of time. This photo is of the pile that I’ve accumulated in our guest room for our impending shore trip. Happy trails! |
Of course there will be quite a few items that can’t be packed until the day or two prior to leaving, but the more that’s done ahead of time, the less stressed I am the day before. Just in case you didn’t catch it, I never wait until the morning of a scheduled departure to drag out the suitcases!|
What does a hard-working homeschooling mom do with all those 3-D projects, art papers, grammar workbooks, math tests? Throw them away? Horrors!! There is an alternative that can make both the “savers” and the “throwers” happy, believe it or not. The solution is to make a portfolio to showcase a selection of each student’s best work throughout the school year. Portfolios are required by law in some states, but they are a good idea for everyone for several reasons: preserving hard work, providing evidence for skeptical grandparents or other family members and friends, planning purposes for younger siblings, and recording grades and/or levels earned.
A meritorious portfolio does not include every single assignment from every single subject. It includes a representation, which has the best writing samples, the best test scores, the best artwork, the best notebooking pages, and the best worksheet pages. It also includes pictures of 3-D projects, field trips, and other activities that can’t be condensed to a single written document. To grade or not to grade? That debate is a whole separate subject which is goes far beyond the scope of this entry. But, if you choose not to give actual grades or not to fill out a report card (or its equivalent), then a portfolio becomes even more important. A portfolio gives physical evidence that little Johnny really is a genius – just like you always thought! The easiest way to make a portfolio to do all along, but it’s never too late to start. My preference is to take my children’s binders (again, a different topic, but I’ll get to that one eventually) about once a month, choose papers to go into the portfolio and trash the rest, unless they’re needed for a later test. Older students who have final exams may benefit from having some of the papers not needed on an every day basis sorted and put into another binder kept on a shelf for future reference. That’s the ideal scenario. However, I fully realize that it’s June and most of you are just ending your school years. If you’ve got piles, cartons, or binders stuffed full of papers all over your dining room table, that’s OK! Take it one pile at a time. Sort by subject, then by date, then choose the best page or two out of every 10 or 20. Use dividers to separate each subject. Have each child decorate the front of his or her binder, add the year and grade, and you’ve got a portfolio! Questions? Yes, please! How else will I create my “following?” Your questions may provide fodder for a future blog entry, or I’ll respond personally. |
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Hi All! I may be new to blogging, but I'm not new to homeschooling. We've finished (OK, not quite, we have 3 more days) our 8th year with a 12 year-old 8th grader & a 10 year-old 4th grader. I'm hoping this blog will help me to break into the magazine article publishing business. I've written a few articles and one is "under contract," but doesn't have a publication date yet. A friend suggested I try to create a "following" to increase my credibility and presence on the web and in the homeschool community. So, jump on board & let's see where this adventure takes us! |