Posted on August 24, 2009 - by Kay
How to Plan for the Year
Everyone has their own system of planning their homeschooling curriculum for the year. It’s just a matter of finding the method that works best for you and digging in. With that in mind, I thought I’d document my own journey this summer in case it might be helpful to someone else learning how to plan out their year.
I started this summer by digging in on the AmblesideOnline website since that is the main curriculum we will be following this year. I pulled up the booklist for Year 1 and printed it out. I looked through our own personal library and my parents’ library (my mom LOVES children’s books), talked with friends who have already gone through Year 1, visited several used book sales, and looked for online resources, including our local library system’s catalog. Every time I would come across one of the books on this year’s list, I would mark on my printout who owned that particular book.
Next, I printed out the Ambleside Year 1 schedule in the form of a spreadsheet I got from the Yahoo Group for AO Year 1. [Just an aside, if you haven't discovered all the great Groups on Yahoo, definitely make some time to join. They are a wonderful resource of files, ideas, links, and most importantly a network of other moms and dads doing the same thing you're doing - learning how to be a teacher! And by the way, there are tons of groups out there, not just related specifically to AO, but also to homeschooling in general and anything else you could probably think of, too!] I spent the next few hours of planning just mapping out which books were where, bookmarking the online books that we would be using, and making notes to myself to request the books I would need from the library on the weeks previous to when I would need to use them. I also outlined my own selections for Poetry, Artist Study, Composer Study and Nature Study for the first few weeks.
Next, I went back to fill in the blanks where AO allows for you to pick your own books. I chose the Bible Story book we’ll be using and filled in the first few weeks of readings. I made the temporary decision to table Foreign Language, Folk Songs, Hymns, Drill and Memory Work for now. I’m already feeling overwhelmed with the amount of content we already have to cover and know that as the year progresses and we both settle into this style of learning and our own routine, we’ll be glad to add new, fresh things to our diet.
And then came the hard work. I started researching phonics and math curriculums. It seems that this part alone could take hours just by itself. AO has very kindly listed a few suggestions of curriculums for each of these two pillar subjects, so I started with their list. I looked over a copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons from our library and realized that I need something that deals more with the rules of phonics as Kate (my 6 year old) is already reading quite well. However, if you’re just starting out with reading with your child, I highly recommend this book. It seems to be very straight forward, has great scripting for the parent to know EXACTLY what to say every step of the way, and has great documented results.
Now that I’m feeling a little more comfortable with the big picture of how everything will work for Term 1 (AO uses a 3 Term system of 12 weeks each instead of a typical public school semester), I’m ready to sketch out the details of how our individual days of each week will look and put things on our calendar. You can see what Year 1, Week 1 looks like here. This website will actually serve to document our progress and house my lesson plans for this year. (You can see our lesson plans from our Kindergarten year here.)
I’m sure that there are things that I’ve forgotten or left out, but I’m also allowing myself the grace to just START and we can fix things as we go. The perfectionist in me is kicking and screaming to have every detail in place, but the pragmatist is saying, “Come on, Kay. We’ve got to get going!”
So, what’s the system that has worked for you as you’ve planned your school year? Do you calendar everything on a dry erase board, write out detailed plans months in advance, or wing it as you go? Any tidbits of advice you’d like to share or have questions about? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below.
