Lesson Planning Simplified

This is so easy, I almost feel like I am cheating. I had to keep rechecking this method because it is working so darn good!

I know that it may be a little late in the home school season to share a method on planning, since all you real teaching moms had your lessons planned months ago, right? Really though, I have actually been so busy putting together our school year that I haven’t had time to share my exciting simplified planning method.

For years I would try different types of lesson planners, online, offline, custom made etc. they all worked in different ways, but I kept noticing something: they all put a lot of the pressure on me.

One of my home school goals is to teach my children to be independent learners as soon as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE teaching my children, but I still have a house to clean, laundry to do, meals to cook and…well you get the picture!

I have also found that if I am honest with myself and make a big goal of “planning every Sunday” there were far too many Mondays with nothing to do. SO I had to come up with a more efficient method, and this year, I have finally found it!

I purchased a whole bunch of binders during the great back to school sales this summer. A home school can never have enough binders, can they? One day in Staples I saw these pretty little dividers with numbers on them and I got my idea. While these aren’t exactly cheap, I feel they make up for it in the long run. And they are durable so they can be reused year after year.

In each binder, I added in the dividers and then placed each lesson for each week behind the appropriate number. For language arts, for example, I tore out each lesson from the book and placed it behind the appropriate weekly label.  In a matter of minutes, I had “planned” out the entire school year for one subject, a process that can normally take me hours!

Now I am having my children keep a daily log of assignments based on what lessons are in their weekly dividers. In other words, they do the planning. I placed blank planning sheets for the week, ( I used this one for Donna Youngs site), enough for the entire school year,  in another binder for them to use as their daily log. It is easy for me to check because I just open up to the week and compare it to their log and make sure they are on track. No more spending Sunday evenings gathering together the lessons. And the completed logs make a great portfolio and record of our work for the year.

I did this for every subject for each child, and have been amazed at how well it is working for us! And I have great peace of mind knowing that even if I fall behind in life, the lessons are all right there, ready to go!

For more great home school ideas, tips and tricks be sure to visit Thirsty Thursdays over at Five J’s!

I know that each home school family is unique in their approach, lesson  plans etc. So I’d like to know, how do you plan your lessons for school? Do you do them weekly, yearly, monthly? What method works best for you?

Tagged as: home schoo, lesson plans, simplify planning