Getting Organized Part 2

After creating the daily folders, I know need to create a weekly schedule.

In my last post Getting Organized Part 1 I mentioned that we were using an excel form from donnayoung.com that we really liked. But, I wanted to come up with something that would help Lily stay even more focused. Lily is my motor mouth and she distracts herself (and every thing distracts her) so easily. So I decided that it would be nice to have some sort of daily schedule to put into each of her folders. Good idea huh? Well, I couldn't find anything I wanted online. You know what that means...do it yourself. I created this very basic chart that I could just change each week, print off, cut up and place in her daily folders. Yeah. (Oh yeah, I've been printing it on colored paper for a splash of color.)



See, a very basic form but it's really helping. This system works even better if I gather all of her books and set them in a pile next to her. :) The only thing that may be an issue is that I don't have a copy of her 'weekly schedule'. I kinda do, I have the copy on the computer. Currently I've been looking in her daily folder to see what exactly she needs to do. So I might create another form for myself. I'm thinking maybe a 2 child weekly form so that I can schedule some stuff for Jasmine all on the same form. There's a form over at donnayoung.com that looks like it might work. It's called Planner for Two Children.

I must say that I love her site. :) I also printed off a yearly calendar from her that I put in my binder. I highlighted our planned 'vacations' and then I just mark an X on each day that she's present. Tuh-dah, our fancy attendance form.

I then printed off *surprise* another form from her site. :) This one lists subjects across the top and dates down the side. Then after she completes a subject I put a check in the box for that date. This is a great visual for me. I can just glance at it and easily see how we're doing or if we're behind on doing a subject (like art).

This year-at-a-glance form at Smooth Stones Academy looks like it might be nice to create. Hmm, I think I'm realizing that I like seeing stuff in bright colors.

I suppose that's good for now.

Have a great day.

Getting Organized Part 1

I haven't exactly figured out how to organize our homeschool. So far I have tried something different each year. Let's see here...

For the first year I used The Homeschool Planbook. Which probably would have worked wonderfully except that I filled out the planner for the whole year, at the beginning. Yep, you guessed it. I set myself up for failure. As soon as we got behind in one thing it messed everything up. Then I would start feeling bad, and that voice in my head would start commenting about me not being a good enough homeschooler...blah blah blah.

So then I switched to just scheduling one week at a time. Which helped a lot. I used this lovely excel form for donnayoung.org. I really liked this form. I would type out Lily's schedule for the week and print it out. Then I would tape it up so that it was right there and easy to get to. Then when Lily when finish a subject she would put a check mark in the little box.

This was a great improvement on keeping Lily focused, but not perfect. Also, I was trying to type up the schedule on Sunday evenings. This process meant that I would pull out each book and see what she needed to do next and the page numbers then key it in. As you can see, it was still a lot of work for me to do each week. This was also the time that I made any copies that we needed for the week.

And that brings us to now. We have only been using this new method for almost 2 weeks now. But so far it has been working wonderfully! But before I tell you what I do....I must tell you where I got my info. :) I have visited many blogs and websites (and I mean MANY) and I took a little from here, and a little from there. So I will try to give credit as I go along.

The first thing I realized that I needed (from many ladies over on the WTM board) was to continue making a weekly schedule each week BUT have a master schedule for each subject first to pull the information from.

I hope I'm making sense! :)

So to make up my Subject schedules I used a blank schedule form from Core Foundations and typed in our lesson plans. I then printed it off and put it my teacher binder. (I put colored dividers in the binder for each subject).

Here's an example of our Latin schedule keyed into the blank schedule.

Phew! It took me forever to figure out how to post that image. Anywho...

Next I decided to create daily folders. So Lily would have one folder for each day of the week and in each folder she would have all the worksheets/handouts that she needed that day. Yeah! And it's working. Lily is staying focused, she doesn't have to get up (and distracted) quite as often. I got this great idea from Trivium Academy. I plan on getting this desktop organizer for the daily folders.