Mom Is Teaching

I talked yesterday about pre-planning for homeschool. Making an outline of the natural rhythm in your home to see where your children’s (and your’s) energies go. Are you morning people, or afternoon people? Do you think better after a long walk to get your blood flowing, or do you need time to sit and relax to get your minds in the mood?

Today it is all about getting a plan. Or specifically getting a planner. Depending on what you are using to teach you may not need to buy or make a planner. Some curiculums come with guidelines of what to do when that you can use. Using the plans that come with the curriculum is an easy way to stay on course. But many do not come with plans. And of course there are those who want to change the plans to suit their family better, or are eclectic and need to mesh several different styles together. For those buying or making a good lanner can be a life saver.

There are several great places online that you can go to print out pages to put together your own planner. Donna Young and The HomeSchool Mom are two great sites that I love. They have easy to use pages that you can print off and adapt to your own homeschooling needs. There are also some great homeschooling moms who have created their own planners and are willing to share. Jenny at Little Acorn’s Treehouse has her personal teaching planner online for anyone to download and use. She even has her girls’ personal work planners online to share with other homeschooling moms.

Some prefer to use online planners that do some of the work for there. Ther are several great sites that will work with homeschoolers to create a plan for them to use online. Home School Inc. is one such site that lets parents enter all the information online and creates a workable plan. There are also planners on disc that you can buy to keep your records on your computer and ready to print out whenever you need them. The Master Planner is one such disc.

Of course there are also several planner books that you can buy. There are several books that are geared for teachers that homeschoolers can easily use. Or you can buy ne of the many planners made just for homeschoolers. The Ultimate Homeschool Plannerand the Homeschool Teacher’s Plan Bookare two such books that some homeschoolers use.

What do I have? I have one large binder full of grocery lsits, important contact lists, and printed off calender pages that I can write in. If you have ever tried FlyLady you know what I mean. Because i don’t need to plan much I keep a section in the back with some print offs. I keep a book list of books we wer reading, a short scope and sequence list, and a few fun activities based on books that we have or will get from the local library. It helps me to keep everything in one place, though I am sure that as my sons get older they will each ahve their own seperate folder.

Tomorrow I am going to talk about getting curriculum and supplies in order.