Homeschooling Planning for flexible homeschoolers
I’m starting my homeschooling planning for September. While I see the appeal and benefit of unschooling, it’s not the right choice for our family, for a variety of reasons, so we do have some planning involved in our school life.
We are very flexible homeschoolers, but we do have some structure within that flexible framework. So I plan a little ahead for the different things we’ll do each year. This school year we’ll also dealing with the move back home to Kingston, so I want to try and stay organized from the time we move back and beyond. I feel like moving back into the house is an opportunity to start fresh and keep things flowing well.
As disappointed as I am that our travel time is over (for now), I feel like pouring my love into our house and homeschooling planning will help keep my mind off the road for a little bit (but definitely not for long—I’m already plotting for the next get away).
Anyway, I thought it might be helpful to list what I’m using for my planning and curriculum this year. I’m still working as I go, but these are the definite things in my bookshelf as I plan ahead.
1. A good planner for life in general and note-taking
I fell in love with The Happy Planner during our RV trip. I absolutely love their stuff, and have been using my planner, the many stickers, and some of the extras daily. I’ll continue to use this planner for general appointments, scheduling, and my “daily intentions.”
This year I’m also giving my kids a planner each to get them into the habit of planning ahead for their day and week.
2. A personalized homeschool planner
I created my own Homeschooling Planner a while ago. It has pages for planning materials purchases, pages for lesson planning, pages to write down daily plans, and more. It’s a nice way to intentionally organize for lessons I plan to teach during the school year.
If you want a free copy of the planning pages,please click here.
3. The “transformation bundle”
A couple years back, I created the “transformation bundle.” It’s meant for those who want to get organized. It has organization lists for everything from your house to your computer to your car, plus a cleaning schedule to help keep things tidy, and packing checklists so I never forget to pack anything again. There’s also 50 self-care ideas that take 10 minutes or less, because while we all know self-care is important, ain’t no mama got time for hour-long bubble baths.
I’ll be printing all of the transformation bundle for myself to get organized for the school year ahead.
4. Curriculum
This year, as usual, I’m doing a mish-mash of things when it comes to curriculum. We’re using the Canadian Curriculum books as supplements. I’m using a spelling textbook for my 4th grader, and we’re considering using The Good & The Beautiful Curriculum. We’ll also likely use Right Start Math again—we have Level B and I might purchase Level A if I can find a used copy. As usual, we’ll do lots of reading and we’ll go to several educational events. I’ll be writing more posts about our lesson plans, so stay tuned.