School Planning

Summer is quickly coming to an end. For us homeschoolers that means time to plan and prepare for our upcoming school year.  I’m a bit overwhelmed this year as normally I am done with this by now, but this year that is not the case. With just 4 weeks left until school starts I am scampering to wrap this up. 

I’ll have 7 students this year. This is the most I will probably ever have at a time. (whew!!) I’ll have two highschoolers as Shayden will be in 9th, (How did that happen?) one jr high, and four elementary.

For my high schoolers and jr higher I’m trying something new called Homeschool Tracker. Its taking some work right now to input everything for an entire year but when I don’t have to think twice about lesson plans the rest of the year it will be worth it.  It’s not necessary to create lesson plans for the whole school year but I’ve done this for the last several years and found that the amount of work I put into it over the summer pays off when I don’t have to worry about it during the busyness of the school year. Come December I also plan on cuddling a new little one and the last thing I’ll want to think about is lesson plans!

For my younger students I’m still using my binder system. We’ve been doing this for a few years and I love it. It has taken away the dread I used to feel on Sunday nights as I prepared for our new week of school. Now all I do it grab the folder for the month of work they are doing and load binders! Viola!

Hopefully I can get this all completed in the next couple of weeks so I can spend the last week before school starts relaxing with my kiddos! This is what my dining table has been looking like. Somehow we have still managed to eat! That’s always a good thing! I’m  a good girl and have my water bottle and my jar of pregnancy tea here to sip on throughout the many hours of planning. 

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Finance Checklist

One of the simple things that has helped me so much this year was making a simple checklist to keep track of our finances. I keep this list in a sheet protector in the front of our finance binder. It has been so nice to be able to look at our bills every month and compare if we have gone up or down in something without having to dig thru past bills. If this would be a help to anyone else just click on the picture and download it.

Daily binder

Today I took it easy on my arm again. It’s feeling somewhat better but not all the way so I didn’t want to push it.  The kids worked at trying to restore some sanity to our messy school room. I tore it apart Monday sorting thru all my 15 years worth of curriculum, and then add in the normal wear and tear to the room and it equaled a disaster.

While the kids worked on cleaning and organizing I spent most of my day working on my binders. I have a Home Management binder that I love, but I realized I really didn’t need to be hauling it out daily when there were only a few sections that would be used every day.

I decided to fine tune it and create a smaller binder for daily use, something that had everything in it I needed on a daily basis. I broke it up into sections:

Calendar: monthly calendars for the entire year printed out

My daily planner sheets: this is a sheet I made to have my day at a glance and mark things off as I go

Our daily routines section: Every day has an assigned duty such as Monday being our “kitchen” day. I’ve listed the things that need to be done on Mondays such as specific cleaning in the kitchen or extra meals made, salad dressings made, granola, or snacks for the week.

A daily chore section: This has a detailed chore list so the kids and I can look at what chores each child has. We have our house broken up into “zones”, such as kitchen, living room, etc. Each child bids on a zone and that’s the part of the house they are responsible for maintaining. We keep a copy of each zone and the duties that go with the zone printed up and hanging somewhere in that room but we also have copies of each zone list and what needs to be done in that zone in this section of the binder.

Weekly, monthly, and semi annually chore lists: This is just chore lists for things we only do weekly, monthly, or even less often than that. We do detailed cleaning of each zone in our home on the weekends. We only focus on one zone a week. I really don’t think we need to deep clean the bathroom every week. That may sound gross but when it’s swept and wiped down daily that makes it easier to maintain and doesn’t usually require the heavy duty cleaning every week.

Table time: This section keeps track of the things we do together at the table for school. We’ve really been slacking in this area over the last few months of fundraising and preparing for Shelbie’s trip. I’m anxious to get back into the swing of things!

Lesson plans: Instead of having my lesson plan book sitting around where it always gets misplaced, I cut off the binding, 3 hole punched it and popped it right into a binder that I knew we would being using daily. The less I have to keep up with the better!

Reading logs: I make my kids individual reading logs for school every year. Usually they go into our big school binder that holds all of our tests results from the school or other info that we don’t need daily or sometimes even monthly. I decided that having a section for this eliminates me having to pull down that heavy binder every time someone completes' a book and they don’t have to look it up on the computer either. It’s right at my finger tips!

I’m sure I’ll continue to tweak and fine tune this over the rest of the summer. Hopefully by the time we start school it’s working the way I hope it will!

“ He who gains time gains everything.”

Eating, cleaning, and laundry

Duane, Shaylah, and the boys went to the San Francisco Giants game today. I had a list of things I had hoped to get done, but unfortunately I didn’t get to any of it. My day started with laundry. I lost track of how many loads I did today. Between feeding people, cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry it’s a wonder how anything gets done! LOL I really think I need to institute a rule of only one meal a day and everyone just wear their bathing suits everyday. It would cut down on hours of my day. I’m not sure I can convince them of this great plan though.

As I was getting the clean laundry put up I realized that the girls room really needed some major attention. It’s hard to expect my little girls to maintain and keep their room and drawers clean when they have too much stuff and it’s not organized at all. I spent the afternoon going thru all their clothes, trying them on, packing up the sizes that didn’t fit, and ended up with 2 bags to goodwill. I even went as far as packing up camping clothes. Shelbie usually packs the little girls up for camping, but with her gone I knew it was my job. I figured that even though we don’t have a date planned yet I better be prepared.  The beginning of our project. Did you notice my floor is missing?Yay! My floor is back. Drawers are clean, clothes that we don’t need until the next season are packed away in bins under the beds, and two bags are ready for Goodwill. I guess it was still a successful day!

January planning

I love January! Many people tend to feel a bit let down after all the holiday festivities, family get togethers, and  nothing but cold winter weather ahead for the next couple of months. Not me!  The new year is a clean slate just waiting to be written on!

What am I going to write on that slate?  Time is a gift, with no go backs or do over's. Time is our most precious commodity, what are we going to do with the time given to us? 

The end of one year and the beginning of a new one is when I ponder, pray, and once again seek to simplify our lives.  I’m working on fine tuning the home management binder I already have and also creating a day planner (a.k.a. portable brain) to use away from home. With so much busyness going on here these tools are a necessity to things running smoothly for us.

I haven’t decided if I am going to create my own planner or just use some of the great resources already out there.  I’m usually not one to reinvent the wheel but the idea of having something personalized to meet the specific needs of our family sounds appealing too. Actually the truth is that I spent many hours creating something that fit what I wanted then my computer crashed.  

So do I want to put in all the hours again or not…that is the million dollar question.

Pre-reader chore chart

I made my little girlies a chore chart that they could “read” all by their selves and not need the help of a sibling. I used clip art to show pictures of their chores.  I laminated it and made X’s that are also laminated and velcro to the chart. There are two columns: Not done and Done. After they are done with each chore they move the X to the done column.

It is so nice not having to remind them of their chores and they love being able to see what is expected next.   I love anything that simplifies my life more!

Having a plan

“If you aim at nothing you will hit it.”

It’s that time of the year again…a new school year.  Usually I am a little more prepared than I am this year but I’m going to use the excuse of having a new baby…okay, okay, for anyone that knows my sweet Shiro then you know that’s not the case since he is such an easy baby. I’m way behind out of pure laziness. There I said it! Laziness is such an ugly word!

My guys were camping last weekend so since it was just us girls I figured I better just dive in and get my school planning done. I had a 2:30 am, 4:00 am, and a 1:00 night (I’m way to old for that!) and accomplished quite a lot.  Besides making some copies for history, our lapbooks, and some art stuff for my little girls I am just about done. YAY!

It is so overwhelming to get everything ready for our new year but it really is critical for our year running smoothly. I have been homeschooling for almost 15 years now and I’ve learned how important “planning” is. It’s actually very important to every aspect of our lives.

With a family our size we can’t just “wing it”.  It doesn’t work at all. I’ve learned and am continuing to learn that I must plan ahead for meals, chores, school, and pretty much every other area in our home if I want our home to run smoothly and efficiently.

I can honestly say that I have not arrived and the Lord is continuing to grow me in this area but I am always seeking and working towards this goal. I really don’t think that just big families can benefit from having a plan of action.  For large families I think it’s critical, but I think even when we only had 4 or 5 children our home ran much smoother with a plan of action.

I have a goal..a plan, and I’m aiming for it!  I pray the Lord covers this new school year and it is one of our best school year’s yet! In two weeks we’ll be off and running!

"Let all things be done decently and in order."

1 Corinthians 14:40

Tell Your Time

   This is a wonderful book on organizing your time and your life so we can be a better steward with the things God has entrusted us with…our husbands, children, homes, etc. This is a short easy read but will possibly change your life!  Even if you already feel you are organized I know that you can glean some helpful hints from this. 

This e-book is on sale thru July 31st for only $2.00.  Skip the coffee and buy this book.  You won’t be sorry!

School prep

I am having so much fun getting ready for our upcoming school year.  I have been working at things a little bit here and there, but my goal is to be completely done by the end of next month.

I am doing a few things different this year.   One of those things is to have all the kiddos each have their own binder that will hold all their work in one place. 

For Poppet and Shadd I have dividers set up for each day of the week.  I load their school work in it on Sunday night and they know exactly what they have to do for each day and the order in which to do  it.

To make life even a bit more easy for me I have also gone thru each of their workbooks and pulled work for about 3 months and stapled them together in a weeks worth of work and put them in a folder.  Now instead of pulling out each book and pulling the work I just go to the child’s folder and pull the work for the week and put it in each day’s folder. 

 (Folders filled with 3 months of schoolwork)

(A day’s worth of work stapled together)

I also have them do some extra things that are just for fun and to break up the momentum of the school day such as coloring pages, games, and puzzles.  I printed off pictures of certain learning games and  put the picture in their binder under the day I want them to do it.  For the puzzles I just printed up a page that says “puzzle time” and they know to go get a puzzle to work on.

(Poppet’s binder)

(I even scanned the Draw write Now book cover and laminated it on a piece of cardstock and put that in her binder when I want her to do this)

(picture of a game that I put in Poppet’s binder)

For Shaylah, Shayden, and Shannen I am doing it a bit different.  Their binders are divided by subject instead of day.  Since they don’t have as many workbooks as the little ones I am printing up a schedule of when I want work done by and they keep that under the tab of that subject.  For a subject that they do have a workbook for, such as Wordly Wise, I will pull a months work of work and hole punch it and put it in their binder. 

(the older kids binder)

We have been putting our workbooks in practice for two weeks now and the kids love it!  They love seeing exactly what they have for that day and how much is left.  School has been so easy for me too!  I am still fine tuning this system a bit, but so far we are all very pleased.  The old saying “if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” is very true!  So far we are all happy!!