Planning Progress - Almost Done! 2019-2020

I'm happy to say that my school planning is basically complete! I'm SURE it will have to be tweaked once we get into it, but it's so much easier to tweak a plan that's not exactly working as well as anticipated, rather than starting from scratch and feeling the futility of weeks spent treading water.

I had done a lot of back-and-forth in my mind about whether or not to enroll with the local charter school again this year. We did last year, and did not the year before. There are pros and cons for both choices, and I was really on the fence about it. I was leaning toward not enrolling with them, and had almost made that my final decision, but I wanted to discuss it with My Man first. We talked about it together, and decided we WILL school through the charter this year. It's such a relief to have that plan made! Everything else partially hinged upon that decision!

I have chosen our resources for the year, and have the list in to the school to purchase for us. There are some odds and ends we will need to purchase for ourselves, as well. The biggest thing being a home weather station, as I want to dedicate much of our year to a simple weather study. I'm basing this off of a weather journal we kept for a year or two while I was being homeschooled. I look back on that time with such fond memories!

I will have the kids' chore charts ready after I buy more laminating paper. I didn't realize I only had 2 sheets left. And then I tried using them on one chart and accidentally messed it up. It has all these little wrinkles at the top and I can't seem to get them fixed. I know these charts work because we tried them for a couple weeks about a month ago, and the only problem was that I had to print a new one each day for each kid, and then we had old ones all about the house not making it to the trash. We decided we'd laminate them and use dry erase markers to check them off. (We did have to make tweaks, of course, but that is done now and I feel confident in their continued success.)

I have a similar checklist for myself that includes all the basic things, which I'm hoping will keep me on track instead of stressed out. I've also made a school checklist with info about how often during the week we should do each subject, and for how many minutes at a time. I am very much a fan of Charlotte Mason, but I have to say that my weekly plan does not exactly reflect her suggestions. I have read extensively on the idea of following her timetables exactly, and was stressed that I couldn't seem to do so no matter how hard I tried. I have come to peace with this, and I am pleased with my current intentions.

I have on another sheet a simple, easy-to-read plan of the morning schedule. Just another paper to help us see where we should be at any given time. This is the only paper that actually says "Do this at such-and-such time", and it is very general. (For example, it says simply "School" during that time period, instead of "Math" followed by "Literature" etc.)

I have a few other small things to get in order, but this has been for the most part, a pretty relaxed planning period. Just a little here and there and I've seemed to pretty well get things accomplished! I think I'll be able to easily knock out the rest well before time to dive back in to school (hopefully I'm not jinxing myself...).

I am very excited about the coming year! I am also very excited about our vacation weeks!

And the thing that I am the very MOST excited about is something that I have NO basis to gauge whether it will be successful or not. But I THINK I'm going to be very pleased with the results! It solves several problems at once in what seems to be a simple solution. Here are the problems:

- Many of the women in our church (including some homeschooling mothers with their children) meet every Tuesday for lunch and quilting (Park Day during summer vacation). We love attending but:
- It is difficult to fit this in while also keeping up with the school agenda. I don't want to go to a 4-day week unless absolutely necessary, but 5 days isn't strictly necessary to accomplish our goals either.
- Especially since I also have to get groceries at some point in the week, which is such a huge job! It has to be done either with 5 kids in tow, or at night when they are in bed and My Man is watching them. Neither way is fun.
- And we also need to fit in piano lessons at some point!
- And I absolutely DO NOT want to have to leave the house more than one "business day" per week. Not unless it's of an evening with my Man.

The resolution:
Alternating Tuesdays. We'll have a school Tuesday and a shopping Tuesday. On School Tuesday, our workload will be lightened a bit to make the time for our friends. On Shopping Tuesday, we'll go to ONE of the two stores I mainly frequent, and purchase 4 weeks worth of groceries from that store. The next Shopping Tuesday, we'll get 4 weeks of groceries from the other store. I also intend to experiment with the "Pick-up" feature: shop for the groceries online, and then just let them load the car and go home and deal with the groceries. As far as piano lessons are concerned, I can't tell you HOW HAPPY I was when the piano teacher texted me last weekend because she was working on the schedule. She had a slot for us, and was asking if it would work for us. But she also noted that if Sissy was going to start this year, then we would need a different slot instead. I told her we plan to have Sissy start. So she asked if Tuesday afternoons would work, from 2:30-3:30. This is THE VERY BEST time of the week for us to go to lessons! I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO thrilled! We'll be able to leave the quilting and go straight to lessons. When lessons are over, we'll arrive home in time to get supper going and complete our evening chores.

I am SO excited about this! I'll let you know how it goes. I hope it is everything I imagine it to be.

Percolating Some School Plans

I'm disappointed in myself for taking some time off during our spring/summer school term. We should have been able to finish this week, but instead we have to continue this week and next week, as well as doing a little extra each day. It's not the end of the world, but how I wish we would've stuck to the plan. It was entirely my fault, not the kids'. Well, and we did get sick and that threw us off for a couple weeks. So I shouldn't blame myself entirely, either.

However, I'm looking forward to being done in the next two weeks! I'm working a little here and there on plans for next term, and enjoying that. I'm kinda wanting to be DONE with this term's school, but that's because of how excited I am for next term, and I want to make sure I have everything laid out for a very successful term!

I'm actually working on some plans for the whole year, because it doesn't make sense to only plan one term. It's more like a term + a year, since I consider our school years beginning in January with the new yearly schedule I laid out for us a few months ago.

The main thing I'm excited about is my history plans. The history we have done so far in our homeschool journey has felt a bit off, and even quite a bit disjointed-feeling to me, to tell the truth. But I'm feeling really good about my intentions.

I plan to study 1800-1900 United States history, as well as a special look in particular at the history of our state in that time period. I still need to find the specific resources I'll be using, but I have an idea of what we'll be covering:

        Westward expansion - Lewis & Clark, Oregon trail, California & Klondike gold rushes, and the addition of territories and states
        Immigration during this time period
        Civil War
        Indian relations
        Highlighting some of the inventions/inventors of the time
        And of course numerous smaller aspects of this time period

Also, I'll need to choose composers, artists, & poets that correspond with the history rotation. I already have a couple of ideas on each of these, but will be looking into more. I think I may know what I want to use for a history spine book, but I'll want to check further into this as well.

At the moment, however, I'm trying to get an idea of a schedule down on paper to see how and where everything is going to fit. I've just begun to mess around with that. We have quite a list to try to accomplish.

In no particular order -

Daily:
Bible reading
Copywork
Math
P.E. break
Spanish
Piano practice
Free reading
Short Nature Walk
"Science" (nature books)
Literature

Weekly:
History (twice)
Biography
Geography
Art (twice)
Artist
Composer

I have additional notes on these for myself, and how to fit it all in. It seems that Son should be able to complete a reading every day, Sissy should be able to complete a reading every day, and I should complete a reading every day in addition to reading a few verses from the Bible every morning. I will also do any reading involved in the less literature-based subjects, such as art, composer study, spanish, etc. The children should also do "free reading" for about 20 minutes each afternoon, that is based from my selections for free reading (so I might choose 15 books per child for the year, and then they can choose what they want to read - but they must read from these selections for about 20 minutes per day).

Hopefully this will all work out well. I am enjoying preparing. I'm hoping that my "little-by-little" work will mostly get the plans ironed out by the time we take our break in two weeks, and then maybe it'll just take a couple days of concerted effort to get all the finishing touches planned and start ordering resources. If THAT works out like I want (I'm trying to be realistic, though...), then I hope to spend the rest of the break cracking down on some things that need changed around the house in general. Decluttering mainly, but also "spring" cleaning so maybe everything will just feel a little more fresh and prepared when we begin next terms work. (Beginning in August - so not too much of a break!)

Come to think of it, if I'm being realistic, there's not a whole lot of chance that I'll be that close in the next two weeks. We have a wedding to attend this Saturday, and possibly having company who will be in the area for the wedding. Then the next Saturday is our Hayride Weekend, which will be very busy. Last year our family didn't have company except one of my sisters, which was okay because we came down sick that week. But the year before? We had a houseful! So far we don't know if we'll have anyone here for this year's Hayride Weekend, but we probably will. These events will be fun, but very busy! Especially on top of trying to go ahead and get our school term finished up, because I think it would be better to do school during this busy time, and still get our break as planned (almost - just one week shorter). The alternative would be to say "Forget this!", and leaving the school behind for now, start it back up again much sooner than planned. I just don't think I'll be happy with myself if that is how it goes down. So instead I'll keep plugging along, and look forward both to our break, and to a more well-planned year to come!

Clipboard

I don't remember if I mentioned this before, or not. But my plan was to laminate my current schedule so I could reuse it over and over. I hadn't bought any laminate yet, but I had a couple of 8x10 picture frames with real glass, and thought "You know, the marker will probably wipe off of the glass better than plastic anyway!" So... I cut down the pages (since 8.5x11 won't fit in a 8x10 frame, LOL), and put them in frames. One is a daily schedule, and one is a less frequent. By the way, I LOVE them! :-)

They had both been working great for me, while I was printing a new daily each day. Once I decided to frame them, they became decidedly less convenient. I've determined that the laminate would be almost just as inconvenient, so back to the old page-and-pen version for me. However, I have hit upon one small difference that I think will actually vastly improve the schedule for me - a clipboard! We don't have hardly any clipboards right now - I think just one, and my Man uses it. So I want to buy myself a small, but durable clipboard, and I really think this will help a lot.

I was thinking to get one of the ones that is really cheap, just one thin board with a clip at the top. But it just occurred to me that one of the ones that can hold a few small items inside might actually be better. Three reasons;

1) My "weekly-and-less-frequent" sheet will need to be referenced every day as I fill out pertinent info for the day on my daily.
2) I would like to print several dailies at once, and have a handy place to access the fresh copy each day. (I actually had a system before that worked well... but what could possibly be more convenient than having the copies RIGHT THERE in the clipboard?!!)
3) I usually keep the sheets for a few days as records, until I've recorded the important stuff in a more readable word format. Since I don't journal daily (I used to, and want to start again, but...), then I usually need to keep these for several days to help me remember what exactly it was that we did each day. :-) I have NOT found a good system for storing my used schedules, so this would be the very best reason for a clipboard with storage room. :-)

So those are my thoughts.

There is always something new going on in my organizing plans & habits. LOL. Hey, as long as it's working, then it's not wishy-washy, right?! :-)

Some Jan-Jun Goals for upcoming 2017

Once again dealing with sleep issues, I decided to get up and write out my lofty goals for the next 6 months.

Earlier today, I updated a schedule of mine. I absolutely loved the schedule I created for myself in January of this year, and it worked great for me. As needed, I tweaked it and made changes here and there. Naturally, a very busy time of life came and I became unable to use that schedule. However, I continued to create updated versions from time to time, although I never did get back into the swing of using one again. In the last few weeks, I created a new daily schedule for myself. I kept some of the aspects of the schedule that worked so well for several months at the beginning of this year, but I made a few drastic changes as well. I think it will work better for these busy days with uncommon business and projects and goals to be accomplished many of our days.

What I did today, was to create a second schedule sheet that covers weekly needs as well as less frequent things that need to be done (but in my home, are often forgotten). I want to use the new daily and "general" schedules for a week or two, so I can tweak them with any necessary changes, and then I intend to laminate them back-to-back. I can then either find my dry-erase pens, or purchase another set. I am hoping this serves the purpose of reusing the same sheet over and over, rather than printing a new one every day.

I hope this schedule works as well as last year's did! It was so successful, that I feel it has made a change in our life even after it was no longer in use!

As far as the many goals I listed a few minutes ago, to attempt to cover during the next 6 months, I think I will not announce them... I can only take so much embarrassment if they do not come to pass! LOL. I suppose I will mention, though, that I intend to purge, re-purge, and purge AGAIN my entire household. This is something that is so important to me, that I found myself re-listing it again every two months. (January - Household purge & re-purge. March - Household purge & re-purge.  May - Household purge & re-purge.) I'm not even kidding!

That is another thing that has made a vast difference in my life. Beginning last January, I began to "KonMari" my home. I whizzed through the first 3 categories (out of 5 - but the 4th category is the biggest). I did both my items/belongings, and also the kids'. This was accomplished January-March. It actually seems like we were halfway through January before I began, but I can't recall for sure. In any case, I was so pleased with the results, and it has still made an amazing difference! Although it needs done again (supposedly you are supposed to do it once and never need to repeat. Although that didn't quite work, this is still the best method I've discovered so far!).

My current intention is to just start culling down anything & everything that is no longer useful or desirable, until I've gotten this place under control enough to reKonMari, hopefully in one quick shot. I have a lot of stuff in the basement that is already ear-tagged for donations, but I'm finding myself noticing more and more and ever more items that I want OUT. OF. MY. HOUSE. As of now, it feels hopeless to finish my beautiful KonMari cause. So I'm thinking that if I work hard at everything I already know/guess that I want out, then I'll make enough room and brain-space to be able to do the job properly.

I honestly do not know how this will go. But I'm hoping that January will see this first portion fully accomplished. Then in March, I can do the proper KonMari. And in May, I can re-evaluate, maintain, and work on any possible remaining tidbits of junk. Not sure it'll go down this way, but oh, do I ever hope so!