How to plan for your new homeschool year

All of us homeschool Moms are getting into our version of nesting.  We are checking our last-minute curriculum.  We’re cleaning out the dried-up markers and broken crayons.  We’re making sure we have enough pencils, where do they go?  We are planning our homeschool year, or as much as we can before the business of the school year starts.

And printing, don’t forget the printing.  So much printing.

I’m trying something new this year.

Want to know what it is?

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I’m making each of my kids their own schedule with Illuminations.

I now make my own schedule: see how and how you can get it here

I hope to teach the kids how to track what they should have done each day.

Confession: I’m also hoping that with 4 copies of the schedule printed I can go a week without losing the schedule. UPDATE: with our new clipboards, our organization and getting stuff done has been amazing

Future Ticia here, while the kids had separate classes that were super helpful, but once the specific individual classes were done, I just added an extra subject for the individual subjects because I really didn’t like updating individual schedules.  The year after I just created a master schedule with a few individual subjects.

If all of this sounds confusing, check out start homeschooling today.

now totally irrelevant on me organizing a defunct piece of programming

However, I just spent 20 minutes rearranging the subject order on my computer screen.  Why?  Because I can.  I’d get it all planned out, and then decide I didn’t like the order, OR I’d remember a subject one kid has that another doesn’t.

That’s right my kids also now have different classes they’re taking.  Batman has a Chinese class.  Princess is potentially taking a weekly dance class.  Superman doesn’t know what he wants to do on his own, but he wants something special.  Preferably on the computer.

But, it’s getting harder to keep track of.  And, I’m not organized.  One look at my desk right now would prove it.  I’d show the pictures, but really.  It’s horrid.

So, I’m struggling to get control in small ways.  This weekend, it’s putting together our history notebook for the year.

Last year found me standing here at the last minute an awful lot.  I’d suddenly remember there was a great map for the lesson.  Or, I’d printed off a lapbook page and had lost one piece.

This year I planned ahead, check this out.

I planned out my entire history notebook for the homeschool year

I went through all of Wondermaps* for the middle ages, and printed out every map I thought we might use.  Not all of them, but a fair number.

Then I went through the notebooking pages for The Mystery of History 2  and printed micro versions of the pages to look at them all together.  I checked off which pages to pick on my printout, and did the same with the lapbook from the Super Supplemental Collection.

I had one more thing to print out.  I printed out ALL of the quizzes and tests.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I printed out the ones I liked, and left out all of the pre-tests.  I’d already killed a couple of trees with all of this printing.

Finally, I spent hours sorting it all.  At first, I watched TV and it was 2 neat little piles.  Then, I moved to the dining room table.

You know, the big huge table that seats 10 people. THAT table.

And I spread out.  I had piles of paper all over as I sorted.

Finally, I needed the Table of Contents on MOH2 because it was THAT much stuff.  But I didn’t have the hands to hold the book open and sort the pages I needed, so…

I grabbed the stoneware pitcher from our wedding china to hold it open.  I figured it’d be heavy enough to do that.

Slowly, very slowly, there were several interruptions.  My book was put together.

And as I finish typing this post, the last few pages are printing.

Confession: I’m only printing up the first several weeks on my printer, and I’m going to finish the printing tomorrow night at the copy shop to save my printer.

I think this year is my most prepared year of all.  We’ll see if I’m right………… Future Ticia here, this plan worked great.  I repeated it last year, and am going to use it again this year.

PS: Expect several Bible posts this week because I want to bank several for my Sunday School class parents to be able to refer to, right now I’m running a week behind where they are, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll get Jonah up, and then go from there.  Fingers crossed, and hopefully I’m organized.  I’m very very hopeful.  Future Ticia here, I must have gotten this done because now all of the prophets are up.