Goals and Planning

As much as I love unschooling, and understand how wonderful it is for my kids learning, I am a little crazy about planning.  I am an unorganized person by nature, and a little lazy to boot, so without a plan of some basic sort it is easy for me to get sidetracked, lose focus, and to fail in many areas of my life.  I have tackled this in my homemaking life with my homemaking binder, chronicled here: Peace, Love, Laundry and Food  Having had success with that I have a homeschooling binder.

On the cover is a poem I wrote in 2006 for my resume.  It helps remind me why I do what I do.

The beauty in the face of a child
       Who finally understands.
The ah has and the I get its
        And the ever present demands.
The wonder in a student's eyes
         When they see who you are.
A counselor, and mentor, and the
          World's best teacher by far.
You show them how to conquer math
          And teach them how to read.
You scaffold them, and love them
           Trying to fill every need.
You lift them up so they can grow
           Proud, and smart, and strong.
You teach them to be themselves
            Though you don't have them long.
For all these reasons and many more
             Do all the teachers teach.
For our lives are full and our goals are met
             If even one small life is reached.

I handwrite my basic plans for each day of the week in pencil in the daily section.

The front has my spreadsheet of basic goals and subjects I want to cover in 2014.  Then the daily section where I keep my lesson plans.  Tomorrow looks like this:  

Monday 15     Dixit

Binder                 Phys ed               Science lesson and games with Rich

Geography          Time Machine

Chess                   Library visit

I put the day of the week, day of the month, followed by the game we will play together in the evening.  Then just a basic list of what I want to cover that day.  Our time machine is just reading the Time Machine and doing the literature unit we have to go along with it.  We will continue in a geography book we are doing and play chess.  Their binders have a math activity, a literacy activity, a calendar to fill in, weather to graph, time to write in analog and digital, multiplication fact families, and they have to write and illustrate a sentence in their journal.

The other portions of my binder are: Art and Music, Health and Phys Ed, Language arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Technology and other.  In art I have the printouts for the art video curriculum we use.  In phys ed I have a printout of the phys ed curriculum I purchased.  Other sections have ideas, curriculum, lists of helpful websites, or anything I think will help me in that area of learning.  This bit of organization really helps me not feel overwhelmed.

Just in case the state or town ever requires any type of data from me I have assessment data for each goal I wrote in each spreadsheet.  Sometimes it is a worksheet that shows mastery of a skill, like addition.  Sometimes a project that shows we covered and understood a concept.  An example is a pasta project that showed the life cycle of a butterfly with labels.  Sometimes it is just a copy of the curriculum we used or pictures of an activity.  I am a little paranoid :)

Again, all of this planning and organizing has little to do with helping the kids learn more, and more to do with keeping me sane and feel like I have a little control.  It helps me plan ahead a little, using their interests as a guide.  If they hate a topic we generally skip it, or skim it.  So far there are few things they don't enjoy learning.  If they are not liking a particular type of activity we adapt.  We try to keep learning an enjoyable experience, while still teaching them that if Mommy asks you to do it, you try to do it.  Obviously I want them to learn to write well, but sometimes it is a fight, at which point we put it aside.  I want them to be proficient in adding and subtracting three digit numbers, but sometimes they act like it is a brand new concept, at which point we try again another time.  But with my organization and planning I at least feel like I am prepared to provide educational opportunities on a fairly consistent basis.  And watching them love to learn is worth any work I have to put in.