Our Homeschool Planner – Excerpt Part Four
An excerpt from our Homeschool Planner
What’s in the Planner Overview & How We Use It
Too Many Homeschool Pages for You to Choose From!
What I do first is make notes from our curriculum – or whatever books we’re using and the Year-At-A-Glance Calendars. Then I transfer that information into my individual Subject Objective Pages. From there into the Quarterly Planner and then finally to the Daily Planner by units, chapters, pages and individual lessons.
Then, I use the Weekly Chore Chart and Daily Schedule in conjunction with the Daily Planner and hang them up together so the kids can always see the general time frame for things especially since we often have to change it around depending on my husband’s work schedule.
The basic one-page Objectives is the one I used for the school at the beginning of the year in Pennsylvania, and I kept it very general. Most of the other pages are all for my personal planning to help me break down days/weeks to spend on each subject/curriculum.
There is a Letter of Notification, which is needed for some states. If you have to send this type of letter it’s been recommended that you should send it certified with return receipt – and/or print a copy of the delivery information if you do online tracking.
There is also an end of the year Evaluation Form and Portfolio Covers for states where you need them, personal Health, Dental and Immunization Records, Progress Reports – (also referred to as Scholarship Records in some states, like Kentucky), Attendance Records, along with several varieties and colors of Biography Pages – including Artists, Composers, and Hymns. There are also Spelling and Vocabulary pages for students.
The Spelling & Vocabulary pages are in several colors, designs, and ability levels – drawing a picture for younger students, writing a sentence, and just plain lists for older students.
The Greek and Latin root words pages go well with English from the Roots Up – we prefer to use pages rather than note cards and each child creates their own notebook. There are also some fancy Root Word Trees for fun that come in a selection of colors and can be used in conjunction or separate for root word studies.
Planning your home education program can be done easily if you do it in steps. You don’t have to be worried that you aren’t covering enough because you’re not filling in all the blanks or using all the pages. I always started with the big, yearly picture and work my way down to days – and even then you should give yourself plenty of flexibility.
There are some homeschoolers who recommend starting at 12th grade and working your way backwards, others who go by the every 4 year plan to be sure everything is covered – both are great methods that you may want to give consideration.
Regarding a general 12-year plan – my favorite page is the Yearly Course Plan because it became one of the most freeing pages for our curriculum budget and general plan. I used to only plan one year at a time and I had wish-list pages that I’ve always kept. Often it looked somewhat depressing because it was so long – because I wanted to get “this book” for this and “that book” for that subject and it was just unrealistic to have every supplement because it can be used.
Using the Yearly Course Plan, I brought my curriculum wish list to a realistic and manageable level that actually fits in the budget because I can see what books I need for each child at each grade level. If I would have gotten all the curriculum I thought I wanted my kids would be doing homeschool 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, until they were 20. Fortunately there were times where we didn’t have the money to get certain books/curriculum – which looking back I see God definitely had his guiding hand in there and am thankful, I’m sure my kids are too.
If you are anything like me and your wish-list is a bit overwhelming, then I do recommend that you give that page a try and see how things look for you. If you have younger children and you’re just starting out you may want to only plan the first 6 or 8 years and then have a very general plan for the next 6 or high school years.
Always remember that nothing is set in stone – it’s your plan and you can change it!
What’s important is that you do what will work for your family, and this will most likely change as the years go by, I know it has for me.
