Prepping for Next Year

Sometime this week I will share what curriculum we plan on using in the fall, but today I wanted to address prepping and planning.

I am suffering homeschool burn out so next year I am taking the pre-planned route.  However, this is how I would be prepping if I were to be (and this is how I proceeded to plan last year).

First, choose my curriculum and order what I need (see tomorrow's post for this coming school year's selection).

Second, create a planner for the year, or use the one I already own from Homeschool Creations (see link in the bar to the right).  The latter has worked great in the past, but isn't working for me this half of the year because I wanted something I could cut and paste large chunks of, and I couldn't do that with the Homeschool Creations planner.  In the end, I am a pencil and paper girl and I end up printing 6 copies of my planner page at a time and filling in about 6 weeks of plans at a time.  I only do 6 weeks because I have found that something inevitably changes and then I either have to tweak too many things, or I have to tweak the entire planner (as in delete a curriculum we've been using or add one in, or change the order of things in the day).  I like my planner to be in the order of when we will do things and I like a rough estimate of time down the side, so more like an agenda book.

For Classical Conversations, I take a subject at a time and look for one activity to go with each of the specific memory sentences.  I print out anything that needs to be printed and put it in a file folder labeled with the correct week. If the activity is not something that I can print out, I write the idea and a list of the necessary materials on a piece of paper or an index card and also include it in the file folder.  I keep these in a file folder box under my desk and pull out the ones I need for a few upcoming weeks to keep on top of my desk.

This year, my goal is to be more organized.  My current role model for organization is Confessions of a Homeschooler.  You just have to read her posts on organization.  I will be starting a binder as she describes.  I also love how she stores all her students' work after the year is over.  I went into the school room closet and took stuff out of a binder I already own to get started right away on my main binder.

First in the binder are the attendance forms for Bear and J-jo (I am recycling this year's forms since I never ended up taking attendance; it is not required for Kindergarten).   Directly behind these is our "Notice of Intent to Homeschool."  Our county allows you to send this in electronically via an online form that you can then print out.  Once I file in August, I will add it in.

I've chosen to include dividers for "lesson plans," "curriculum list" (for current, past, and future years), "receipts" (for budgeting purposes), and two extra dividers.  I'm sure I will think of a use for them.  In retrospect, I should have called the "Lesson Plans" tab "Daily Plans" instead.  Off to get rubbing alcohol to change that.

Please leave your tips for prepping and organization (or a link to a post on your blog about it) in the comments below.