There are so many ways I am not organized when it comes to homeschooling! I do not make a lesson plan for the year or the month or even the week. I do not have well prepared and planned ahead of time in depth unit studies for my children. I do not have field trips scheduled that fit in perfectly with our course of study. There are many other things I do not do. It isn't that I have anything against those things,its just that it hasn't worked for me at this point of my life. And I guess what I hope to encourage others with is that you don't have to be super organized in order to have a fun and good and Learning homeschooling experience.
So what do I do? Here is what works for me (us):
- I do order Math, English and Spelling workbooks for Mara and Jonathan. But I will admit that I was late ordering them this year so we were a few weeks late in getting started with our "official" school year. (Just keeping things real! )
- I do have a general schedule for each day. Routine works great for us! Of course then some days(like today) other things get scheduled and then our normal routine doesn't happen.
- I do like to have a general goal of things that I want my kids to learn. We have had fun learning about subjects such as the states or countries and I just find books and figure out a few activities here and there as we go along.
- I do have a lot of learning material on hand to encourage all of to keep learning. We are blessed to have my parents to pass many homeschooling things on to us (I and my siblings have all been homeschooled) as well as others in church. Having a flexible learning plan allows me to use up the things that we have been given. I keep them all on a particular shelf and try to go through it every so often to see if there is anything I want to pull out and put to use at that time.
- I do have a reading aloud time scheduled for each day. It has been our routine ever since Mara was tiny to read a naptime story and so now every day after lunch we just plan on that together time. At first it started as just a story book, then we added Bible in at that time. Now we read geography and history and sometimes science as well. We read fun books so it is not boring textbook reading it is reading that generally keeps the kids asking for more.
- I do have various workbooks available (ones that have been given to us) for Aaron and Megan to work in. It amazes me how much they learn with our scrapped together education!
- I do have lots of fun on this homeschooling journey and usually so do our children! And that I think is important. It works for me!
This is our shelf of learning!
What works for you in your homeschooling? Are you the really organized type or a little more freestyle?
