If You Fail to Plan

You know the old adage, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!"   That little tidbit of wisdom is so very true. I haven't been planning our school days very well lately and our school work has been suffering.  Jeff was at home today and I was able to get a good bit of school time in this morning and got lots of planning done this afternoon.  I still have more to do, but it is such a good feeling to know where we are going and how we are going to get there!!

I have gone back to making daily folders for all the children but my high schooler.  In the folder go Calculadder sheets, Daily Grams, Building Thinking Skills, paper for copywork and a sticky note with other assignments like McGuffey readers, history reading, writing assignments and others.  On the front of each folder I list the assignments that need to be done on that day.  This gives me a reminder of what I need to put in each folder and lets the child know what else he should do (we are using Teaching Textbooks this year and I can't put that in their folders).  It takes a little more time for me to do my planning this way, but I think we  get more accomplished and in a shorter amount of time.

My high schooler has an assignment sheet of daily lessons which include Carson's A Basic History of the US, MUS Stewardship, Daily Grams, Calculadder, McGuffey, Learning Language Arts through Literature: British, reading and writing assignments.  He works three afternoons a week editing programs at The Homeschool Channel unless he is out of town at a conference.  Last week he missed three days of "school" while filming at the Cincinnati conference.  We just have to "school" around his work schedule.  I am so thankful for all he is learning with his job.  I did ask him the other day if he learned anything at the conference.  His reply, "No, not really.  I think I've heard it all now."  Oh, have you, my son!!  In his defense, I was a KONOS rep for a few years and he traveled with me and he has filmed and edited several homeschool speakers this past year.  I said, "Tell me something that you heard."  He began telling me about someone speaking on notebooking (which we have done) and about how she was talking about the three types of learners:  kinesthetic, visual and auditory.   I was impressed.  He is learning much about filming and editing, but also lots about homeschooling methods and lifestyles.  I wonder how I can "label" the info he is learning about homeschooling on a transcript?    So much of our school cannot be planned, but it helps me so much to plan what I can.

Now I am off to rock Caedmon and watch a Netflix movie with the middle children.