Ramblings...

Well our family vacation is over and we are slowly getting back into the swing of things. This always seems to be the hardest part, readjusting to schooling when we’ve had so much time off to relax. I blame myself for this, because the boys are eager to learn and I find I’m handing them workbooks, instead of having detailed lesson plans to work with. I would prefer to have detailed plans so I know we are getting things done instead of just doing “busy work”.

My goal for the 2011-2012 school year is to work on the level of detail I put into plans. Instead of just saying I’ll cover two math lessons on a given day, I will actually put down what I aim to do that day, items to teach, worksheets, and other activities I want to use/do. I also plan to sit down and write out a detailed plan for the whole school year. Up until now I have just wrote down blocks of time, for instance in March I would write Lessons 90-100 in Math, Ancient Rome in History, and so forth for each subject.

Which sounded great on paper but when actually put into effect it causes more work and headaches then I personally need, because I then I have to sit down before the 1st of each month and write out my plan and what I’ll be using. I don’t always have time at the end of each month to do this, and we aren’t always right where my original block put us. By having detailed plans before our new school year even starts I’m hoping to achieve a smoother school year, by getting rid of a lot of work before the year even starts. Then we can just move through our plans knocking off assignments as we get to them. I’ll still break our year down in months to see what we will be covering month to month, I’m just adding in week to week, and day to day ahead of when I usually do them to allow me to get a better handle on what we are learning.

So when we encounter our next break we will be able to pick right up where we left off, without me having to go “Now what am I going to teach?”