Thursday, February 3, 2011

Helpful Homeschool Hints: Daily Schedule

helpful_homeschool_hints

I have a teacher plan book in which I write our daily lessons.  I highlight each lesson as we complete it.  I can see at a glance what we have to do and what we have done.  A few years back when ds2 started 7th grade he wanted access to his assignments so I downloaded Homeschool Tracker Basic, inputted our lessons, and printed him a weekly sheet.

This year I wanted to do something similar for my little boys, but the youngest can’t read yet and I don’t particularly enjoy having to input lessons into a program after having already written them in my own book (and no, I’m not giving that up lol.)  I came up with a daily schedule of sorts that the little boys can use to see exactly what we have planned for the day.

IMG_1237 This is a little “word wall” thing I picked up at Target’s dollar section.  It came with white cardboard strips in each pocket.  I cut those strips up so I could fit three across a row.  The top row has each boy’s name on a strip, ds3 on the left side, ds4 on the right side.  I wrote out each boy’s subjects on a card, ds3 in red, ds4 in green.  (Sometimes it’s a subject, like “history” but sometimes it’s a certain program within a subject, like “Mathletics or “Code Book.”)  Every morning I put the appropriate card under each boy’s name on the chart.  When they complete a subject they can turn the card over.  (Some subjects they study together.  I write those in blue and put them in the middle of the chart.)  Now they can easily see what they have to do each day, and take quite a bit of joy in turning a card over.  Since my boys are still young (4th grade and 1st grade) they really only need to know what subjects we’ll be doing lessons in, not all the details of each lesson.

I especially like this simple system because it is hardly any work for me.   I just consult my lesson planner and put cards on the chart each morning.  Now when I get the inevitable “Are we done yet?” question I can just say, “Check the chart.”  :)

For more Helpful Homeschool Hints visit Many Little Blessings. 

3 comments:

  1. Great idea. Before homeschooling, I was a schoolteacher. I ALWAYS wrote an agenda on our board to keep the kids and I on track. It helped those who wanted to know what was next know without asking, those who needed variety recognize there would be and those who needed to manage time better to understand what we would accomplish. I was doing something similar, but more complicated, at home as can be seen here - http://traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2010/01/routines-and-rhytms-wake-up-time-and.html and am now revamping ideas. I like yours.

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  2. Julie,

    I LOVE this hint! I have a few of those word walls from Target just sitting in a drawer feeling unloved. We did workboxes in fall of 2009 and I've yet to get them set up in our new digs. This might be a good compromise.

    I use HST+ now and will say that the initial time spent to enter in assignments stinks. However, I'm reaping the rewards as the younger boys move up into some of the same work their older brother did. I just reassign from my lesson plans (a HST+ feature.) And, as we've acquired some popular programs (e.g. Teaching Textbooks for my 8th grader), I have found others who've done work and shared it.

    Visiting from the Helpful Homeschool Hints Meme this week :o) (Also suffering from 4 boys in the house with mess all around me.)

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  3. My daughter would love this! I keep a lesson plan book and she just found it this week and so excited to look through and see exactly what I was planning to cover each day.

    Thanks for stopping by earlier!!

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