It’s that time of year again, everyone is scrambling around trying to create a plan of action or a plan to follow for the upcoming homeschool year. It’s also that time of year where some people have already started and I’m already seeing the posts in my group about OMG my well thought out, amazing plan, is not working!! We are only 3 days in and we’re already BEHIND!!
It happens every year. It happened one year to me. 😀 Then last year I had some realizations, and I came up with a new way of planning, that worked better, but not perfectly. Then this year, I came up with the GRAND PLAN. 😀
It’s working great for us, and hopefully it will work great for you.
This plan is perfect for relaxed homeschoolers, eclectic homeschoolers, and curriculum researchers (like me). It works great because it plays to your strengths.
Planning for Relaxed Eclectic Homeschoolers and Research Junkies
Talk to your kiddos, them being involved is an integral part of making this work. Talk to them, see what they are interested in. Not tiny topics… not field trip ideas, but BIG TOPICS. What kind of big things do they want to dig into this year?
For us, the two biggies were World Cultures, and Astronomy.
Once you’ve decided on a big topic for the year, find a “spine” of some sort, any sort will do, depending on your family. 🙂
For World Cultures we decided on Universal Yums as our spine.
Now each month we’ll get a box of snacks from a different country, and that will lead the learning for the month. We’ll dig into the country that comes in the box.
This is where it gets good. 🙂
Once you have your idea for the month, (or week or however you have it set up), you get to keep researching. 🙂 You get to find all the things, out there in the world, on your pinterest boards, or spreadsheets, that you have gathered about this topic. And do a little bit every day, or 3 days a week, or whatever works for you.
For Astronomy we chose 100 Things to See in the Night Sky as our spine.
Each week we pick two things out of the book we want to learn more about. This week we chose Perseids (because the peak was at the end of the week, and we’d planned to go out and watch… weather didn’t cooperate. 🙁 ) and Mars, because it is very visible right now.
You can see how having a framework makes it easier for a compulsive researcher like me, to keep researching without getting overwhelmed. I have a direction to go in, and something specific to look for. It helps me enjoy my compulsion without spinning out with a gajillion resources related to nothing we are doing. 🙂
We still do math. Hanna picked a math curriculum at the end of last year that’s working really well. We like it a lot. We also play a ton of math games, as long as we’re doing something mathy every day, I’m ok with that.
We read books. We are still using Arrows from Brave Writer. There were just so many more books from the list I wanted to read. We listen to them in the car on the way to the barn, and then do the rest on days when she’s home. It’s working out quite well.
We also do Free Write Fridays to get some writing in.
That’s the basics. That’s the framework. It’s working because it gives me enough to feel like we’re “doing school” and enough freedom to feel like we’re not. 🙂 It’s a balancing act around here for sure.
There’s always more though. We’ve created an environment where we love to learn, so there’s learning going on all the time, no matter what we do. We’re interested in all kinds of things. We watch a ton of documentaries, and Great Big Stories piques our interest regularly. But with this simple framework, I don’t have the occasional freak out that we’re not “doing enough” because I know we’re doing plenty.
So, that’s how I plan. A certified, relaxed, eclectic, research junkie. 🙂 Hope it helps you create a planning plan that works for you. Want to chat about your plan? There’s a whole group of us relaxed homeschoolers with older kids out there waiting for you! Come on over and say hi.
