It can be challenging for a homeschool parent to keep up with the constant demands of school work each day, especially if you have multiple children! One of the ways to help each school day, week, month and year go smoothly is to make sure that you are planning ahead.
Save yourself the trouble of last minute lesson plans, and be sure to know what you plan to teach your student(s) at least a week in advance. Some like to use a lesson planner to have everything written down, and others like to just have the lessons marked in the books and the dates they are to be completed. Lesson planning makes it easy to keep track of what needs to be finished, and helps with record taking. Making sure this is done at least a week in advance will not only keep you and your student on task, but will alleviate some stress from the week.
Don’t make it complicated and plan out every minute of each day, but rather write down, for each child, what you need them to accomplish each day for a week. For instance, if you know that you want them to complete their history book by the end of the year, and you know that means they need to complete a chapter a week for that to happen, then you can plan out each day based on that fact. Make sure to factor in quizzes and comprehension review to make sure your student is absorbing the information they are reading, and not just “sticking to schedule.”
MY LATEST VIDEOSPlanning ahead not only saves your sanity, but also ensures you have what you need for the school week. You can make sure you have supplies for a science experiment, an art project or anything else you may need in advance. This keeps projects from being pushed back to another day, and makes each day more smooth. Once you get in to a rhythm of lesson planning, it should only take you about thirty minutes a week, per student, to write down what you want to accomplish for the school week. Who knows? You may even become ambitious and plan a month in advance!
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