{Planning} Part 2 : Weekly Lesson Plans
| July 31, 2012 | Posted by Mommy Cameron under Homeschooling |
Posted in Homeschooling |
As a homeschool mom I love to see how other moms plan their homeschool. Their ideas are often what sparks a change in my homeschool, many times for the better. So for the next couple of days I will be sharing with you how I plan my homeschool.
The first thing I do is decide what subjects I will be guiding my boys through for the school year. Since we are very eclectic in our tastes, I then take some time and tentatively plan out our school year by subjects. You can read more about how I do that {HERE}.
Once I have my yearly plan in place, I then devise more detailed weekly lesson plans. Yes, I need a lesson plan of some sort to help keep me on track. However, if we need to deviate from the lesson it isn’t a big deal.
Much like my yearly plans, I use Excel for my weekly lesson plans. Each boy has their own Excel spreadsheet, that is color coded for each child. Thing 1 is yellow, Thing 2 is green and Thing 3 is blue.
Each sheet in a child’s spreadsheet, is labeled with the week number and date.
The column headings are labeled with each subject area name. 
Each row heading is labeled with the day of the week, however, I don’t necessarily follow the days of the week, I just make sure I cover all the material each week. I guess I could change this to numbers, but I haven’t gotten around to that.
I have also made a column that is just for me to write notes about the days school. In some ways this has become one or the most helpful parts of recording our homeschool journey. I can write down what was too easy and where we were struggling.
Now I fill in each square with the material that I am plan to cover each day. Thing 1 does well with his lessons being written this way because it allows him to easily see how much we have done and how much we have left to do each day.
One advantage I have found planning with Excel, is that if I need to move a subject areas plan back a week, all I have to do is cut and paste that subjects daily plans from one sheet to the next. I have done this several times and I am so thankful that I do not have to rewrite anything.
Likewise, if something I have planned doesn’t work for Thing 1 and I have to make something up on the fly, I can easily update my spreadsheet with those notes. Thus keeping an accurate record of what we are doing.
Also, by having each child’s lesson complete with notes in one place it makes it easy for me to track his progress without having use some other program. Everything I want to know is in one place. It would also make it easy for show someone what he material he has learned if I ever needed to for some reason.
As a way to save paper and printer ink, when Thing 1 and I are doing school, I usually have my laptop open with his lesson plan pulled up, so that I can easily make notes as we go along. That way I am sure not to forget anything.
How do you plan your weeks?
