Homeschool Planning Part 1

Not going to lie, it feels like Christmas!

We got most of our curriculum in now, only missing our math.  Green Bubbles was just as excited as I was.  Well, maybe not.  But he did ask to start school almost right away just because he wanted to do those magic school bus kits!  If you haven't tried them, you really should.  They are fun, follow the scientific method, and are perfect for hands on learning for the younger crowd.  I'm making him wait to do them when we hit that section in our science and he can't wait.  I like having something for him to look forward to that he's that excited about.

So what do you do when you get new books in?... Plan!  I'm delving into these books.  Many of these are new for us this year. There's as many different methods for planning as there are homeschoolers.  Some plan out the entire year in detail, others go monthly, or weekly.  Some homeschoolers plan it out the day off and really just fly by the seat of their pants.  I have totally done all of the above methods before as well and may I recommend NOT doing the last one.  Scrambling the day off to put together supplies only to discover your missing something important (where's the tape?!) is not fun.  Planning the entire year out doesn't work well for us either because things always come up that get you behind track and then you feel the pressure to catch up the entire time which is a losing battle.

So, I'm trying a new method this year!  I still want to see things out pretty far in advance because I'm crazy like that.  But I don't want to attach any of it to a specific date.  Donna Young is a great website to use if you want to make your own calendar.  Her forms, calendars, and planners are all free to download so it's very budget friendly. She has everything you could ever need there from How to Plan for beginner homeschoolers to Household forms for chores, shopping lists, and housework.  There are even handwriting sheets, math worksheets, and pretty much a form for anything you can think of.  I highly encourage you to explore it for yourselves.

From there I downloaded her quarterly planner, one for each subject.  I pulled out the All About Reading book and wrote one lesson in each day on the planner.  Since it is a quarterly planner I am able to get 9 weeks planned out on one piece of paper (per subject of course).  Then, as we actually do the lesson, I will then write it in on a weekly planner that I also got from Donna Young to check it off our list.  I know that last step isn't really needed and many people could skip it completely.  We have to turn in a learning log of what we covered every month and it is much easier to create these monthly logs when I  have a weekly lesson plan to look back on.  Or, I should say, an accurate weekly lesson plan that didn't get behind because I was only writing in what we ACTUALLY did that week.


I put all of these into a 3 ring binder for myself.  I divide the quarterly forms under different dividers by subject.  I put a school calendar at the very front of my binder with all holidays and vacation days marked for quick review.  There are also dividers for field trips, unit studies, notes, weekly schedule that I fill in as we go, and a weekly calendar that includes lists for library books needed that week and supplies we need for our history activities or science experiments.

Of course, these are all paper planner resources. Check back tomorrow for part two in my homeschool planning post all about online planners.

Note: These are my honest opinions.  I was not given anything, or even asked to write these reviews. Nor do I receive anything if you follow the links.  I just like it and wanted to let others know about them.

What does Galleon's Lap mean?

Do you know what a Galleon is?  
It's defined as "a sailing ship in use (especially by Spain) from the 15th through 17th centuries, originally as a warship, later for trade. Galleons were mainly square-rigged and usually had three or more decks and masts."   They were a way to travel the world before we had things like trains, cars, or planes. 

  
So why did we name our homeschool after an old ship? 
We didn't!  If you haven't read Winnie the Pooh, the original books by A.A. Milne, your missing out.  Not the Disney movies or books, but the original.  It's full of laughter, love, and childhood innocence and I totally fell in love with them while reading them to Green Bubbles as bedtime stories a few years ago. He was to young at the time to truly appreicate the humor of the books and I intend to reread them to him again as a literature book for school.  But even as an adult, I'd recommend reading them just for yourself.  The stories are so very sweet.  But what does Winnie the Pooh have to do with Galleon's Lap?  The very last chapter in The House At Pooh Corner has Winnie and Christopher Robin visiting Galleon's Lap to say their goodbyes.

So what is Galleon's Lap?
"It was the only place in the Forest where you could sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for somewhere else. Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons Lap." - A House at Pooh Corner, Chapter X. 

What I Want? 
A Galleon is a large sailing ship.  A way to see the world and travel to new places.  Galleon's Lap was a magical place in Pooh Corner that allowed them to see the entire world.  I want our homeschool to be a place that my children can meet the world, explore, discover, but also be in a comfortable and safe place to do so.  While they are a little young to be truly going off into the world, they aren't to young to show them how big the world is, and the magic that's within it. Christopher Robin said goodbye to Winnie the Pooh when he went off to school, but I hope my children never have to say goodbye while they are learning.  I hope they have plenty of time to also just do nothing.

 And just in case you want your own copy of Winnie The Pooh, just like us, there's a link to a good copy.  The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh  You are never to old, or to young, to have Winnie in your life.