(Part 2 - Planning) Our Musicianary Homeschool 2016-2017

Planning!  Oh how I LOVE planning!  Some consider it an unhealthy obsession or dorky quirk, but I will stand up proudly and say "I LOVE to plan!"  In fact, I far prefer planning to actually "do"ing, but that's a post (errr confession) for another day! ;)

*Quick Note: If you are completely uninterested in reading about our Homeschooling Adventures, I don't fault you at all! ;)  I'll be posting a ministry update later this week! :) *

Organization and planning are definite strengths in my personality.  I love to make lists.  I thrive on pockets and dividers!  AND I am obsessed with planners (i.e. daytimers, calendars, etc...).  So, for this post I thought I'd share the tools I use to keep my Homeschool (and life) mostly (just being honest) organized.

Currently, I am using Erin Condren planners.  I have a LifePlanner for my overall planning and the Teacher Planner for our Homeschool lesson planning.

In my LifePlanner (above left) I track ministry and family events on the monthly pages and use the daily pages to record my "to do" lists for the day.  I break my day into three blocks in my planner (which is how the Lifeplanner vertical addition is broken down already).  The first "block" is where I plan for the things I need to accomplish before our Homeschool day begins at 9:00.  The second "block" is for my afternoon "to do's" and the third is where I plan record any evening (post dinner) activities or chores.  I also keep a yearly birthday/anniversary calendar in the back pocket of my LifePlanner so I "hopefully" don't forget anyone's important day.  In the "notes" section, I have a couple pages for Blog planning, a page for websites/usernames, a page for recipes that I use regularly (i.e. homemade cleaning wipes, hand wash, lip balm, etc...) and a page for personal goals.

My Teacher Planner (above right) is where I have all of my lesson plans.  This planner is not specifically a Homeschool planner so I've made some changes. 

I've included pictures from some of the pages in my Teacher Planner, showing you how I use them and what changes I made.

I like to keep my eye on this page when I'm planning my week
in case there are any fun or unique holidays
I want to cover in school.

I don't remember what these pages said at the top originally, but I used some scrapbooking paper to change the labels at the top.  It's not easy keeping up with Thing 1's reading (he reads so much, so fast) but I'm going to try to at least record the longer chapter books he reads. 

I love all of the graph paper in this planner.  I used it to make lists of things like Art Supplies, ideas for our Occupational Education lessons, and Back to School Supplies to purchase.

I'm using this Long Range Planning page to list field trip ideas and any other special dates to remember each month.

In the back of the planner there are these awesome "check box" pages.  I'm using them to track attendance and grades.  (I have one attendance page and one grade page for each of the boys, but I only took pictures of one of each.)

I am not required by law to track grades, but I decided this year to grade a few subjects as well as behavior.  I'm hoping this will be helpful in motivation (i.e. consequences for laziness!) as well as allow the boys and I to get a picture of where we need to work harder and where they have a good understanding.

This is what the weekly planning pages look like.  You can see on the left I used colored label stickers to cover up the days of the week that were pre-printed in the planner.  Because our schedule is a little "unique", I didn't want to waste pages on weeks when we would only do school 2-3 days (which happens about once a month or so due to travel).  This way I can just record the date that we do school. 

The page above is from several weeks from now.  This year, I planned almost all of our lessons for the entire year.  I've never done that before but am hoping it will save me time in the long run and keep me motivated and on task.  However, another advantage to not having the dates already written in, is that if we aren't able to complete an entire days worth of work, I can just pick it up the next day. (make it two half days instead of one incomplete day and one overloaded day trying to make up from the day before).

Erin Condren planners are beautiful and a bit pricey, but well worth the cost if you can manage it! (I won a couple contests on a blog that got me pretty sizeable credits so I bought them both at greatly discounted costs!  Woohoo!!!)  If you do decide to purchase one, I'd love it if you used my "referral" code then we both get a $10 credit.  Follow THIS LINK to use my referral code.

Well, there's a peak into my Homeschool planning.  Hope you weren't bored out of your mind! ;)  I'll post another Homeschool blog sometime in the next couple of weeks about how I organize our stuff and our schedule.  In the meantime, if your interested in other posts about our Homeschooling Adventures, you'll find them HERE!

Also, I know it's been a while since I've given a One Hope One Truth ministry update, so watch for that coming later this week! :)