To what extent do you plan your year?

[WildOlive]

Do you have a loose mental checklist of things you want to cover in a year? In a month? Do you schedule and plan things out down to each hour in the day? Somewhere in between? I'm curious after seeing a thread on another HS board in which many people said the one thing they couldn't live without in their HS was their planner. We will only just be starting K this fall, and don't even have to report until she is 6, so I am considering this year a practice run. ;) We are in NY, so we will have to keep tabs on things covered when we start reporting.

[Mama Calidad]

I make a rough plan for the next week sometime the week before. :shifty

[RubySlippers]

I use pre-planned curriculums that are exactly what I would write...for the most part...if I weren't lazy. :shifty

[4LovesMom]

In my case, I'm new to homeschooling and I'm a planner personality-wise. Considering both of those things, I have a planner and I'm writing down what we'll do each day. I need some preparation ahead of time going into this or I'll be stressed, but I'm also flexible enough that we can vary from the plan if necessary. :)

[SueQ]

I tried writing everything out but it bugged me because I am so laid back that we never stuck to what I wrote down. :lol So now I do plan for the year what books I'll be using and aprox when I'll be using them during the year but then I do a rough plan for the week.

For FIAR I put books on hold several weeks in advance and would row them as they came in. I may not be able to be quite that flexible this year because I am using FIAR and History together so I am trying to row books that would go along with my History.

Here is a site that you can print off planners from if you are into using planners:
http://forms.donnayoung.org/planners/

[Mama Calidad]

I tried writing everything out but it bugged me because I am so laid back that we never stuck to what I wrote down. :lol

It went that way and the other for us. I'd plan something over an extended period of time and it would catch DD's interest and she'd fly through it and mess my schedule all up. :yes

[SueQ]

I'd plan something over an extended period of time and it would catch DD's interest and she'd fly through it and mess my schedule all up.
:yes Or it would cause ds to ask a question about something and so we would follow that interest and get off on a bunny trail. That is what I love about homeschooling!

For example we rowed Ping last year and I was planning on doing Lentil right after Ping but Devin got so interested in the Oriental culture that we ended up also rowing a Pair of Red Clogs, and Granfather's Journey which postponed Lentil. If we had stuck to the rough schedule I had, we would have missed those fun learning oppertunities and it was fun to spend that extra time on China and Japan! :)

I look for things like that to happen this year, too so I am not scheduling out my whole year. ;) What I am doing is making a daily schedule, making a list of books that I am going to row and coordinating them with either the time period or the values of the books I'll be reading for history and then we'll take things week by week. (ALthough I will look ahead and order a book 3 weeks ahead if I need to get it from the library.)

[booboo]

I'm using something called the Homeschool Teacher's Planner and it's a big help to me this year. It has a look at the year ahead calendar, month by month, week by week. It even has a section for notes and an address section. It has Bible verses through it and you could use it for up to maybe 5 kids. I got it for around $6 through Rainbow Resource.

I"m not a very good planner though. This is the first one I'm using that's actually working! CL gives you a planner for each child and I couldn't do it that way. One would get lost, I'd have to write in 2 planners. It didn't work. I need everything right there for me.

The month by month will help with any field trips, time off planned, holidays, etc. But I'm going week by week with this overall. I'm doing a unit study which is new to us and just need to take it day by day, week by week. Already I've had to erase, change things a little, since Piglet loves her math book and has gone ahead what I originally planned. And I thought I gave her a lot!

[Mamatoto]

I know what we are doing during the year and spend time collecting materials I need...mostly art supplies, books and stories, a recorder, things like that. Then each day we do a circle time with movement verses and songs, and every few days an art time with watercolors or beeswax crayons. We also do nature walks each day. I also have my homeschooling books that *I* am using to motivate me and learn more myself and collect those in advance.