Homeschool Planning {and Tracking}

It's Day 3 of the Back to Homeschool Blog Hop for the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Planning... this makes me want to sing.  "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands {clap clap}." Okay maybe I don't actually love the planning part as much as I love having a binder full of plans and direction for the year.

Where do I start?  Goals.  What do I want these two to learn this year. Last year I was concerned that I needed to follow state standards. I followed the "What my -- Grader needs to know" rules. I am much more laid back now about standards and I set the goals a bit differently. What  facts can we gather, memorize, figure out, and have some fun while doing it. I am set on certain things like language arts (spelling, reading, writing, grammar), history, and math so that is where I start. I know many people ask what the grade standards are and they can be found with an easy google search for what my ---- grader needs to know.

How do we get there? A map!  :)  After deciding what subjects to do, then comes finding curricula to match our/their goals, method, and learning styles. Once that is decided on in comes the lesson planning.  Other than math (I follow my own flow with math) I break down each curriculum into lessons and put them on my lesson list sheet.

I learned quickly that I can not plan out "weeks" in advance because if I get off track I go CRAZY! So I break them down into either daily or weekly lessons and go on to the next when we are ready, instead of messing up a beautifully make weekly lesson plan. Cross out and eraser marks also make me crazy, so then I would have to rewrite it. You get the idea. {type A again :) }. Then after each subject has its lesson list made out, I can add in extras easily to each week to go along with whatever they are doing.

Last year I used our weekly sheet to fill in each day what they did after our day was finished or as they went along. Now I found a new love. Let me introduce you to my new easy peasy online planner/tracker.....

Click to enlarge

Homeschool Skedtrack is perfect for me. You can schedule out lessons or you can have blank text boxes for each subject and fill in what they did for the day. I love this. At first I did not think an online planner would be necessary for K and 1st grade, but it can be as detailed or as simple as you want it to be. I have a Mac so homeschool tracker is foreign to me since it is not mac compatible. Skedtrack can be used on anything. I can even pull it up on the iPads or iPhone. Gotta.Love.That!

I have made many planning pages over the last couple of years. My updated ones can be downloaded at this post here. Many of my older ones can be found using the planning pages tab in the labels section on the right sidebar.

Implementing the Plan!

More to come on this tomorrow when we discuss schoolrooms (education station) . Now go visit the other blogs in the hop and see how they are planning for the year.