Like so many of you, I have spent a lot of time trying to find that perfect homeschool planner. I have watched tons of videos and spent hours researching the best planner, hoping that it will finally help me get my homeschool organized and on track. I start every school year with the intention of keeping a really well-done planner so we have records, and every year I fail. In the past, I have tried every kind of paper planner out there. I have had Erin Condren planners, Happy Planners, and every other version you can imagine. None of them worked for very long or consistently. I would always get off track and find myself weeks later trying to remember what we did so I could write it down. I guess now would be the time to mention that I am more of a write it down after than a plan beforehand kind of person. I don’t have any crazy curriculum that needs a ton of planning. Mostly we just do the next lesson so I don’t really need a ton of pre-planning. After many years of failing with paper planners, I started this year out looking for an online planner. I was hoping an online planner would work for me since the paper ones were not. After a little looking around I settled on the Well Planned Gal’s online homeschool planner. It is a subscription-based planner, but it is worth it for me. I have to say so far I LOVE it! If you are the kind of person who likes to pre-plan everything and have a full schedule to follow this planner works for that. This planner also works great for people like me who like to sort of plan from behind or keep track of what was done. I will say there was a bit of a learning curve and I made a few adjustments to make it fit what I needed, but now that I have it tweaked I think it’s great. I added all of our courses for the year, told it how many times a week we wanted to do them, and then I simply check them off for the day. You can print off a schedule for your students for the week, and one for yourself with all the assignments if that is something you want to do. One of the best parts is that it tracks other things for me, like attendance. If we check all of our boxes for the day it counts that as a school day and I have an attendance tracker without having to remember to fill out another form. There is also a place to easily add grades and then it will make me a progress report. On Fridays, after we have finished school I can sit down and make sure everything is checked off for the week and then print out a schedule of everything we did for our records. I put this printout in our binders with our weekly saved work. It’s really easy to go back into the program and add things like field trips, changes to assignments, and even notes on exactly what we did. It is pretty customizable to what you need or want it to be. The Well Planned Gal online planner has been one of the best changes I have made to our homeschool ever. I don’t see this being something that changes anytime soon. If you want to check it out here is the link to the website https://sso.wellplannedgal.com/login-in-mwpd.php?act=hedua&trail=1. They even have a 30-day free trial if you want to try it out. Now I just need a version of this for my everyday life!
Organization
Years ago when I first started homeschooling I scoured the internet for all the homeschool organization tips. After all, homeschooling does tend to come with a lot of paper. I found a blog where the writer used a plastic crate with hanging folders to organize each week of the year and the worksheets needed. We used this system for a couple of years and then stepped away from it for a while. This year we went back to that system and I fell in love with it all over again. I have 36 hanging folders in a crate and each kid has a folder for each corresponding week. At the beginning of the year, I sat down and tore apart the math notebooks, printed off the worksheets, and put everything the kids need for the week inside the folders. Now, on Monday they go grab the folder for the week and it has what they need. It also helps keep them organized. Whatever they finish goes right back into the folder and not all over the house. There are a few things that we don’t put into the folder, like Fix-It-Grammar. That comes in a spiral-bound notebook so I just leave those there, but everything that could easily get put into a folder gets put into them. At the end of the week, I throw away what we aren’t keeping and file what we are. I keep things like Math tests, note pages, and our schedule. Those all go into our binders to keep as a record of sorts for the year. The folders just get tucked into the back of the crate for use next year. If you’re looking for an easy way to organize all those worksheets for the year give this a try. It takes a couple hours before the school year starts and then it’s all taken care of and ready to go. This is one of the changes we made that will be sticking around for a while.
Happy Holidays
I hope your holiday season is going well. Ours is going ok. We’ve had a few bumps in the road but overall there isn’t much to complain about. My previous post mentioned sick kids, and like sickness tends to do mom and dad were next. My husband and I were both a little under the weather this past week. Mostly just really tired with a nagging cough. Because of this, our Christmas plans got put on hold a little. The family Christmas got moved back a week to give us all time to get over whatever it was that made the rounds in our house. We have an almost 91-year-old grandpa and a five-month-old baby in our extended family and really did not want to pass these germs along to them. So instead of heading over to the in-laws for Christmas our little family stayed home. We spent our night eating finger foods, making cookies for Santa, and playing board games. It ended up being a great evening. The rest of our holiday time off will be spent resting and getting everything reorganized and back on track for the new year. I don’t like to make New Year’s resolutions because they always seem to fail immediately, but I like the idea of setting goals. I’ve spent some time thinking about the goals I would like to set for the upcoming year and plan on getting them on paper this next week. This New Year will mark halfway through our school year and is always such a great time to find some new motivation and things to look forward to. Sometimes you need a break so you can come back with motivation and a fresh mind. Until next time I hope your holidays went well and you have a Happy New Year!
What a Week
This last week wiped us all out. As I sit here typing this post my 11-year-old, who never takes a rest, is laying down for a nap. Like many people around the country, we got a lot of bad weather last week. For us, it was snow and about four days of constant wind. We have 5ft. tall snow drifts in our backyard and our poor neighbor had her entire garage and front door blocked off. For most of the week, it wasn’t safe to leave our house. The wind caused whiteout conditions and the roads around us shut down due to safety. Because we homeschool this shouldn’t have been a big deal but on top of the bad weather, we also had the crud making the rounds in our house. Tuesday morning my oldest woke up and didn’t feel well and then was down and out for the next 2.5 days. I don’t actually know if he had the flu or just a simple bug, either way, he did not feel well. Of course, as soon as he got over it my youngest came down with the same thing. She always gets it a bit worse and had a high fever for an entire day before it broke. I was hoping to get a good week of school done this week to make up for the last one, but it looks like we are going to need at least another day of rest. Mostly because no one has slept well in days. (I just took a break to go check on my son and turns out he has a fever again. So I guess here we go with round #2.) All of that to say we are once again off schedule for schooling. It’s beginning to look like we may end up needing to take the entire month of December off since Christmas will be here before we know it. Later today I am going to sit down with a yearly calendar and take another look at our homeschool schedule. At the beginning of the year I had planned for us to use a six-week on and one-week off schedule. This means there was plenty of time off worked into the year. We even started a few weeks early to help this schedule work. So, although we are off schedule we are not in any trouble for the school year. This is once again one of the benefits of homeschooling. A typical school year is 180 days of school but I get to decide how and when we use them. We can start early or go year round if we want to as long as we get our days in. It’s nice not having to rush through sick days or push too hard. Even though I don’t want to take this time off, and I feel a little stressed about having too much time off at once, it isn’t a big deal. I am going to use the rest of our sick time, however long that may be, to take care of the kiddos, our home, and rest. At least the weather is better than last week.
Time to Reflect
As we get nearer to our halfway point for this school year I find it’s time to sit down and evaluate how we’ve done. Sometimes it helps to be a little honest with yourself and really discover what is working for your homeschool and what maybe needs to be thrown out. It could be something as simple as re-working your schedule or as complicated as needing a new curriculum. For us, the things that are working are things that have been working for years. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but we have found a couple of companies that we are sticking with for the long haul. Our Language Arts, Math, and Spelling don’t need any changes. (You can check out my post on my favorite curriculum if you would like more info on that) However, not everything is working as I would like. I still haven’t found a great science curriculum and so far my trying to make unit studies isn’t working. So here in the next few weeks, I need to find something and get it ordered. Especially right now when so many companies are running great curriculum sales. I may end up going back to BookShark for science. I liked their science enough to know that it would at least work well and we would get it done. Or, I have always wanted to try Apologia Science but sometimes their lessons look very overwhelming and LONG. I guess there is a bit more research for me in the near future. History is another subject I’m not entirely happy with either. We are currently working through an Usborne Encylopedia about the World Wars. It’s working but it’s not exactly great as a main spine. I feel like I need a bit more. I would love to go back to BookShark for history because I have always loved their book selection, but it ends up being way too much reading out loud on my part. Maybe if I just use their main spines and worksheets. Once again, there are a few decisions to make. Other than that our school is ok. We could do a bit better with our time usage but I feel like everyone could say that. Overall I am pretty happy with how things are going. Most importantly I can see my kids are learning and growing. That is the main goal anyways right? To see our kids learn and make progress. One of the biggest benefits to being a homeschool mom is that I am the one that gets to watch them progress and grow, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
Here is the link to the Evaluation pages I made if you would like your own copy. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Homeschool-Evaluation-Form-8886267
Catching Up
We are back to school this week after taking the last two off. That of course involved a bit of catching up, especially on the things I let slide before our trip. I had a few papers to grade, schedules to print, spelling lists to make, and catching up on filing everything away. I decided to do a few things differently this year in regard to paperwork, and that change really started with my choice of homeschool planners. I’ve tried so many different options and none of them have worked. All of them lasted a few weeks and then I would get off track and never be able to catch up again. This year I wanted to go with an online option in hopes that it would help me stay on top of things, and it seems to be working. Currently, I am using the online planner from Well Planned Gal. I put all our curriculum choices into the program at the start of the year and now I simply sign on and check off what we have done. The best part for me is that at the end of every week I can print off a schedule with all the things we’ve done and put that into our records books. I am not actually required to keep records in the state I live in, but I like to keep a little something for myself. This year I am using 3-ring binders, one for each kid, and weekly tabs to put a few papers behind. I start with the printed schedule and then add math tests, spelling lists and tests, history and science notes, and any writing papers they did. Other things like their grammar pages are in a spiral notebook so we leave those there. In years past I have really struggled with deciding what to keep and what to toss and this system has made it so much easier. I toss their daily math work and keep their weekly tests and we don’t end up with piles of math worksheets everywhere. Of course, before leaving I just shoved everything into a pile on our desk and left it there. So yesterday I took a little time to update my planner and make sure everything was entered into the system. I then took time to grade and put all the papers into the appropriate notebook behind the weekly tab. Lastly, I printed off and made new spelling lists and other weekly worksheets for the kids. It seems very simple but just doing those few things has really helped keep our homeschool year on track and our paper mess to a minimum. I think both the new planner and the 3-ring binders will be a permanent addition to our homeschool.
Home and Back Again
One of the big benefits of homeschooling is the ability to have a flexible schedule. This last week we took some time to travel to Texas and be with my family that I haven’t seen in a few years. It was WAY overdue. Our trip started with a 17-hour drive. On top of the drive, we were pulling our camper which adds a few extra hours to the total drive time. To say we were exhausted is an understatement, but after two days we made it home. Since this would be the only holiday we were home for my mom went ahead and planned Christmas and a birthday party alongside Thanksgiving. We pulled into her driveway and were greeted by a house completely covered in Christmas lights. My mom has always done the holidays big. We spent the next week eating too much food, laughing a ton, and really just soaking in time with family. There really is nothing like time with your family to sort of re-ground you and remind you of who you are. Especially if like me, you don’t live anywhere near them. It felt so good to actually be a part of the family holiday celebrations again. I am so thankful that we didn’t have to rush this trip. Homeschooling allowed us to take our time and just hang out. We didn’t have to be home by a certain time and we ended up staying an extra day because we wanted to. Once we were back in our home our break was extended to give us a few recovery days after another two-day drive to get back home. In total, we took two weeks off school and it is all scheduled in the yearly plan. I love the life that homeschooling allows us to live. We get to do so many amazing things together and we get to do them on our own time. This time it was a trip to Texas. I can’t wait to see what the next adventure will be.
First Curriculum
When we first started homeschooling my oldest was in Kindergarten and I had absolutely no idea where to start. I wasn’t confident enough in myself to make things up or piece together a curriculum. This led me to look for an all-in-one or boxed curriculum. After lots of research and contemplation, we started out with BookShark. https://www.bookshark.com/level-a-all-subject-package. The all-in-one package comes with everything you need. For a nervous mom, this was perfect. Each subject comes completely scheduled out for you so there is no guessing what to do each day. It also has step-by-step instructions on how to teach the subject, and often it will even tell you exactly what to say. This was what I wanted and was so very helpful for those first few years. On top of being open and go BookShark has other great qualities, and the best one is its book selection. The base of our home library was built the first few years we used BookShark. In fact, the books in the kindergarten package have been some of our all-time favorites. For instance, James Herriot’s Treasury for Children is still to this day one of my favorite read-alouds. For a first-time homeschooler, BookShark was a great choice and one we stuck with for a few years. Although we have made changes curriculum wise, I still think starting with BookShark was the right choice for me, and it’s one I do not regret. Homeschooling can be very overwhelming in the beginning and that fear has stopped people from trying. So I would say anything that helps you start is a good thing. As you gain knowledge over time you can adjust as needed. I think that’s pretty good life advice in general, get started and adjust as you go. If you’re new to homeschooling find something to help you start, and if you’re a seasoned homeschooler remember that the curriculum doesn’t own you. You can always change it if you want to!
How We Got Started
We started our homeschooling journey when my oldest was in Kindergarten. The previous year he attended an in-school Pre-K and at the same time, I was introduced to the idea of homeschooling by some new friends. The only thing I knew about homeschool was that my sister did Abeka’s video program for a few years when she was a high-level gymnast. Overall this was still a pretty new concept for me but in my heart, it felt right. Getting my husband on board was a whole other thing. He, like most people, only knew of homeschooling from outdated opinions and stereotypes. However, he trusted me and he let me try. We both kind of figured Kindergarten would be a good grade to test the waters. I hoped I couldn’t mess up too much at that point. That first year went really well and because she wanted to, our youngest joined in. She is only eighteen months younger than her brother and so it was really easy to find something for her to do alongside him. There have been hard days and even hard seasons over the years but it has never been a decision we regretted making. I am so thankful for all the extra time I have had with my kids. This school year will be our seventh year homeschooling and as of right now we plan to continue for the foreseeable future.
End of the first-year celebration
Wattles and Combs Farm 