Getting Ready for a New Year: Lesson Plans
I have one day left - one day to finish my lesson plans, put away the books on my couch (which looks a bit like a library shelf), get my planner ready to go, and get every part of my house clean at the same time so we start day one neat and tidy.
Do you hear the crickets chirping? It’s so quiet. Okay, I admit that I’m not going to have that all done by the end of tomorrow - not even by the end of the weekend.
What happened? I have been working so hard on lessons plans! Well, it might have something to do with this idea that I could get a website up and running by August. What was I thinking?! I try to start our new homeschooling year at the beginning of August!
Like most years, I’m not quite ready to go yet. Of course, we never fully take a break from homeschooling, either. I don’t know what homeschooling is like for you, but for us, it’s pretty much our whole life. I never REALLY get a break. Our “break” just means the kids continue working on subjects they can do without my help so I can work on designing new lesson plans. This year my lesson plans are intense! We have finished our first cycle through history and science and are preparing to begin a new cycle. When I started this four-year cycle (that turned into a six-year cycle), I was homeschooling one child. Now, I’m homeschooling three and trying to construct lesson plans that are focused on logic stage children while still incorporating some activities for a pre-grammar stage child (that’s my way of saying my kids are almost 13, 10, and 4). If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out Susan Wise Bauer’s book The Well-Trained Mind. While I consider myself an eclectic homeschooler, I also lean heavily toward the classical model of education she describes in her book. I may have just confused you again. I guess I’ll have to talk about homeschooling styles somewhere on my website!
Anyway, back to these lesson plans. Trying to make lesson plans that cover the needs of children of widely varying ages is challenging. My new lesson plans are more elaborate than any lesson plans I have attempted before. It will certainly be an adventure this year to see how quickly we can progress through each plan. When I make lesson plans, I make a plan for a whole year at a time. I’ve looked at some lesson plans online, and they are usually focused on one specific topic and provide detailed information about how the subject will be presented - sometimes they’re even scripted and tell you what to say. My lesson plans aren’t like that at all. I do one plan for each subject, and each plan is divided into topical sections (and often divided into subtopics). In each section, I list the materials we will need to study that topic: page numbers in our primary books, books from our personal library, books to get from the public library, activities to complete, and in some cases, links to websites that provide information I couldn’t find elsewhere. When I started homeschooling, my plans were simpler. Over time, I found that I needed to have a bit more in the plan so it was easier to keep us moving through a day. Some of my plans end up being really long because, well, I probably use too many books. I have a hard time saying that. How can you use too many books? In our family, we LOVE books. We have bookshelves in nearly every room of our house. You’re probably only in a book free zone in my bathrooms, and even then you’ll often find them left on bathroom counters. My plans are probably a little over the top. My husband thinks I should put them in my online store, but I think before I can do that I would have to simplify them a bit. Maybe someday…
So what happens now that I didn’t get ready in time? Well, nothing really. I will hopefully launch this website within the next week and then I’ll finish my last couple lesson plans and we’ll “officially” start a little late. That’s okay. My kids are used to this, and they have plenty to work on. They are both working on writing and illustrating their stories for the annual Rainbow Resource Story Contest. If I try to start new material right now, I’ll be hearing some grumbling about the stories that aren’t finished yet. I don’t want to interfere with that! I love seeing the books that they create and it’s a fantastic program.
No, nothing happens, except that I get to experience the unsatisfactory feeling of being behind. I feel like that all the time, though. I’m getting used to it. I imagine you feel like that, too. Progress always seems slower than I expect, but we always get where we need to be in the end.
