Lesson Planning 101

 Lesson planning can be one of the most daunting tasks we face as new homeschoolers.  What is it?  What does it look like? What should it look like?  How do I do it?  Maybe I am just really slow on the uptake, but it seems like this was a skill that I learned very painfully.   

Now after ten years of home educating our seven kiddos, I have found a system that works for us.  Feel free to take these ideas and tweak them to fit your family! Use them as a jumping off point to fill the needs you have in this area.

Step One:  Get some kind of planning pages or calendar pages.     

Use Free Resources!  There is no need to purchase expensive planners or planning software or subscribe to costly websites!  You don’t even need to purchase a moderately priced monthly planner, as these rarely meet your needs as a homeschooler anyway. 

www.donnayoung.org has plenty of free printables for planning.  She makes her vast knowledge available to you at no cost! Here you will find calendar pages, planning pages, to do lists, etc all for free. 

If you are handy with excel then by all means use the computer.  Just keep in mind that hard drives fail, virus’ are uploaded accidentally, and unsaved work can be lost in a moment.  :(

Especially at first, go low tech and save yourself some frustration.

Remember, “The best laid plans of mice and men soon go awry” to quote Robert Burns’ poem. 

This happens more than I care to admit. 

The best defense is a good offense!   

Step Two: Break down your curriculum into weekly chunks, then daily chunks per child. 

Combine your students into as many learning groups as possible.  I have ten and twelve year olds in the same “grade” doing the same work.  Then I have combined a three and a five year old.  My fifteen year old is not close enough to anyone, and neither is my six year old. 

Keep in mind your time budget!  How many activities are you and your family involved in? karate? Tennis? Soccer? Church?

Beginning to wonder how you can feed your family dinner and have clean undies each week?  You can do this, but that is another topic altogether!

Step Three:  Fill in your weekly calendar.  Then look realistically at it!  Does something need to go?  Don’t “do” the good at the expense of the best!

Look realistically at what you want to accomplish each week. 

Make allowances for down time and sick days.  Build these into your planning! 

Keep these tips in mind when going through your planning:

•  Don’t be a perfectionist! You use the curriculum, not the other way around!
•  There are no curriculum police who require you to use 100% of a curriculum! 
•  In turn, there is no need to complete 100% of what you planned!
•  HSLD recommends equivalency!  There are NO homeschool laws in OK!  This is not a license for slacking, but it should be freeing when you are prayerfully considering your year.  If you complete your work in less than 180 days, no biggie.  Don’t stress over it!