Our planning might look pretty different from the majority of planning you’ll see around the beginning of the school year. No detailed daily lesson plans or even a lesson plan book. Maybe this will change as my crew gets older but for now (Kindergarten, 2nd, and 3rd grade) we are planning from a big picture overview.
We use a daily agenda for day to day plans. (Blog post coming soon) To guide our daily plans we simply follow our curriculum ( You can read about our curriculum choices here All About Reading and Masterbooks Math.) and I use this big picture overview to make sure I include electives throughout the month.
There are six different areas we’ll study beyond our daily core (reading, writing, and math.) I plan to do science and social studies 1-2 times a week. My goal for the others is one time a month. That might seem sparse but our life this year is incredibly full with doctor appointments, therapy, and a few (2) extra curricular activities. I know myself and when I feel overwhelmed I end up paralyzed by the overwhelm and actually don’t accomplish very much at all. My thinking is if I plan in a way that makes reaching the goal easy there’s a much higher likely hood of actually accomplishing that goal. At the same time we get to do some really sweet and fun learning together.
Things like sewing and baking I thought of things we would enjoy doing/making. When we get to those activities I’ll look up recipes and patterns. Having an idea to jump off of helps instead of feeling like I’m starting from scratch.
Also, one other idea to encourage success is to do those activities as early in the month as possible. I’ll aim to do at least one the very first week while momentum is theoretically still strong.
My overview is ready for the new school year! You may notice that I only have the first 5 months planned- it’s completely intentional. I don’t need to know now (July) what we will be learning in January. In our family a lot can change between now and then. We are in a season with a lot of growth. Families with very small children or babies are in a similar situation. What is possible now may not be possible later or what you can’t do now maybe you can do later.
I planned the first 5 months based on what I know we will be doing during those 5 months. I’m giving us the capacity to flex and change in January if this set up isn’t working OR to add in more if we are ready for more. As you plan for the upcoming year you may want to plan out the whole year. However, if that feels overwhelming or unreasonable for your family’s situation consider planning the first block of time. Then evaluate and plan the next block of time as you get closer to it.
I hope this was helpful. If you’d enjoy using the template I created I have it linked here for you to download for FREE! I’ll be sharing my daily agenda template soon in a new blogpost about our daily agendas. Be sure to be on the lookout for that!
No Comments