A Planning Retreat 2009-2010

[annettemarie]

So, I already told my DH that soon I was going to kick him and the kids out of the house for the day so I could plan next year. I would go somewhere, but all my books and stuff are here, so maybe they can go visit my in-laws three hours away or something.

Anyway, I'm hoping to do this in May or early June so I can also plan out our Olympian camp this summer.

What I was thinking was, maybe this thread could be an online "home base" for other moms who wanted to share their planning for next year. Feel free to post inspirations, helpful resources, share your methods and ideas, whatever we want. Sometimes I wish I could sit in a big lodge with all of you and pick your brains. Since that's not going to happen, I thought we could have this space for an online retreat.

[PJsmomma]

What a great idea

My son is going to church camp this summer, so I will probably do it then.

It usually takes me awhile to look at everything and decide what my goals are and then plan, but it's fun!

[EviesMom]

Oooo! That totally rocks!

I'm trying desperately not to be sucked in via standard newbie style and buy far too much and make too many plans. Simultaneously, I'm pretty darn sure I will fail miserably and overplan far too much. DD is finishing Pre-K at a public school. DD wants to start now and asks me to do homeschool with her every spare moment (we do either stuff I design that she asks about, like where foods come from; or we do as much Peak with Books as I can stand before I write my own for the same book). I'm thinking we'll start mid-July with a little more structure to how often we work on homeschooling topics.

Anyway, so far I'm thinking I might buy 1 Moving Beyond the Page 5-7 yo theme for reference and an easier/more structured start to the year (the one on change looks most interesting and related to what DD wants to learn).

They recommend RightStart Math and ABeCeDarian, but I'm not sure I want to tackle additional curricula immediately; also $ concerns; also I'm picky.

I write/have written currciula for Scholastic and Kaplan, but I usually work with classroom-oriented stuff for 3-5th grade. So I feel that just makes me picky about other curricula and impatient with some issues. (I was horribly underwhelmed by Peak with Books for example... and another preschool one I can't remember right now)

[JesiLynne]

I am throwing dh and the kids out in a week or 2, I have tons to do. I need absolute peace to do this.

[AngelBee]

I want a retreat too! Maybe I'll head to your house AM

[mommy2abigail]

Great idea!!! We are just starting this year and I am overwhelmed with the amount of cool stuff I want to explore!!!

[JesiLynne]

Well mine is scheduled, pending DH having off memorial day. I'm tossing them out of the house at 8:30 am and they can not come back in the house until 4:30 pm.

Hopefully that will be enough time for me.

[theretohere]

I hadn't thought of this, but what a great idea!
I made a big amazon order a few days ago and I feel like I can't do much more planning until I actually have my supplies in hand.
I also have a few things I still want to order- namely Artistic Pursuits and a ton of art supplies.
I do have a (tentative) daily schedule. DD1 is going to be doing 1st grade. :
In the AM we'll do math first- Miquon and Singapore, but mainly Miquon. Then we'll do LA. We're getting the Complete Writer 1, First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind, and the cursive Memoria Press copybook. After nap we'll do history- SOTW and science. And in the evening we'll do phonics.
I think for the math and LA it should take about 2 hours. And we'll spend as much time as desired on science and history.
And the rest of the time is free play.

Now all I need to do is get my stuff and divide it into lessons. And cut out what we won't use.

[dawningmama]

What a great idea! Subbing and looking into setting aside some time. I'd like to include dp and the kids, but maybe we can set it up separately----brainstorming sessions with each kid and then some time for me to plan.

[MissRubyandKen]

I'll be watching this thread closely for ideas and inspiration. No way I could get an entire day to myself. Just isn't happening around here. I'm going to be working out a general framework then fleshing it in as I find time. Right now I'm playing with doing a sort of unit study and lap book about cats, and starting plans do one about Antarctica next if all goes well and the kids dig it. I'm planning to incorporate lap booking and folder pockets heavily in the plans if they enjoy these. This is my first year experimenting with advance planning and I think it will help us a lot. The kids always want more fun stuff to do and it is challenging for me to do this inside of day to day household responsibilities and having a lo. I just sent out a big (for us) order to Rainbow Resource.

With Math and LA we'll be working through workbooks topics in order at least two days a week I think and expanding on them, carrying into other days as needed or wanted. We'll be getting a wooden abacus and a set of Math dice among other things, but I'm most excited about these. I think the kids will enjoy them. Also a Spill and Spell game. The kids usually copy words for Spelling and then do SpellingCity.com. I think we'll keep that going with new words each week because so far this works for everyone. I ordered a parts of speech card game and some Mad Libs too. I also want to pick out at least four very good choices for books to read together for Literature. Any suggestions? And of course reading whatever, whenever, where ever. Both kids are strong readers who love to read so I reserve the right to scrap my picking Literature for us if it doesn't work out.

Social Studies and Science are where I really want to do a lot of planning and want to correlate them were possible. I want to have a bunch of topics picked out to do mostly in order (changing if necessary). For each topic I'm hoping to have the basic resources (books etc) and project plans picked out, but won't set any time frame in which to complete them and will likely be adding to or changing throughout the year. Then we'll work through each topic, for as long or little as we do before moving onto the next. And if it happens that one of us has a particular interest in one planned topic it can be done at that time. Or if someone has a interest out of the topics we can decide to focus fully on it or do it alongside depending. I want to plan lap books and folder pockets and hands on experiments and projects like art and cooking. I really want to do the three murals from Jan Brett's site too, the Rain Forest, the Arctic, and the African safari. They're beautiful! I know I want to focus heavily on World Geography, different cultures, and Life Science, but delve into other areas as well. I'm definitely doing some things with Art and Architecture History to introduce some World History in a interesting way. Also planning on doing a study of the solar system and rocks. We'll be getting some History pocket folders and I hope to get ideas from them to do some of our own. I want to do this for World Geography, each location getting a pocket to put into a binder. And then lap books about particular animals or habitat or culture etc we are interested in from the particular region we are doing. I also want to do US Geography and start teaching US History, focusing heavily on the People. I really think it'll take us more than one year to go through these plans, but who knows? I'm a newbie at this. All of this will involve a lot of reading, hopefully very good books about each topic.

Sounds like a lot of work this planning stuff, but I'm committed to getting at least a very good start on it throughout the summer and am hopeful I will have at least a years worth of plans, give or take. We usually don't take the summer 'off' but we are this year. We've went through periods of unschooling and also very relaxed some directed, some child led learning. Right now the kids both seem to be thriving with me directing them in a very relaxed way. I'm positive this planning will do very good by my dd, more of a we'll see with my son. If it doesn't do good for him we'll go day to day or week to week or whatever does good for him. I'm fairly certain he'll be happy to participate with quite a bit of it, and as he is only 7, where dd is 9, I'm imagining it will be enough.

[KimberMama]

What a great idea! I'm not sure when I'll ask for day, but I'll be sure to. First step is organization, then planning.

[earthmama369]

Ooh. This thread is already getting my brain working on ideas and plans for next year. I don't know if I'm going to take a solid day to sit down and brainstorm or if it would work better for me to percolate over the course of a month or three, but I'm starting some lists of ideas: Field Trips, Unit Studies, Basic Goals....

[theretohere]

This morning I printed off a bunch of forms from www.donnayoung.org and I spent afternoon quiet time beginning the paper planning.
I'm STILL waiting on the rest of our books and stuff to get here- and it's so hard to wait.

[MyLittleWonders]

I've been slowly starting - either browsing Amazon while the boys are watching TV, or picking dh's brain in the eveings, or pulling out resources I already have. Ds#2 will be joining the ranks as an official hs'er next year, which I think will actually make it much easier to hs ds#1 (the last few days I have been having ds#2 join us during lessons and we do a lesson from The Ordinary Parent's Guide or I have him practice printing, and ds#1 doesn't seem to fuss with me). Though we'll take some time off for the summer (dh will be on summer break), I also strive for a bit more year-roundish schedule (kind of the idea that we learn all the time - whether that be in a more "formal" setting at the table or on the couch with some great books or at a museum or outside doing experiments).

So, my first order of business is figuring out how much dh wants to do this summer. We have 4 chemistry-related experiement kits from NOEO that we have not yet done. I think each kit has about 3 different activities; I figured we'd do those over the summer together.

Math will stay the same: Miquon. We'll move up to the third volume of Story of the World. I want to interlace that with the first volume of A Young People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Spelling will stay All-About-Spelling, and we'll stick with Hooked on Phonics for reading. We'll continue to work through First Language Lessons as a family (we do this at dinner).

For science, we'll explore physics. I don't think I'm going to buy the whole package from NOEO - I did not use their lesson guide at all for chemistry. I am getting many of the books they use for physics, and I'll order the experiment kit from them. We're also going to finally start Spanish with Rosetta Stone (I've had it for over a year now), and the boys are interested in Latin, so we'll go through the Minimus Primer (the languages will be done more informally together).

What I need to work on is how I want to schedule it all. I think we are going to try a block-schedule for history and science - one month of one and then a month of the other, alternating. I want to do language more frequently, but will be happy if we can get through it 2x a week. I need to work on our "vacations" - we can follow a fairly traditional school schedule, but I also need to again check with dh as to how much he wants to do when he's home on break. So, I basically know what I want to do with the boys, but need to figure out the how.

[Black Orchid]

There is a serious Waldorf family near me who actually has that retreat that you're dreaming of. I could never go, but I think it will be nice to read here. DD is only going to be 6, but I feel her thirst for learning is so deep and it takes some work for ME to make it so seamless for HER.

[annettemarie]

That retreat sounds like heaven!

I wanted to share some resources I use to "get me in the mood" so to speak.

Real Learning by Elizabeth Foss
A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Peirlot
Waldorf Education: A Family Guide
Kindergarten with Your Three to Six Year Old by Donna Simmons
Eugene Schwartz's website

[meetoo]

:


I'm buying very few supplies to start with. I will be getting singapore math, explode the code, a globe, and several other maps. That's it to start! Unless of course i get carried away . I do have a bunch of other things too already though. We will be using unit studies for everything else, for the first few months and see how that goes. I'm hoping to do some for of lapbooking/note booking to keep everything organized. or maybe just a 3 ring binder to stick loose papers in??

I started planning for sept. Not sure how far I want to go. I just picked a couple units from homeschoolshare.com and picked out the things i thought DD would like. then added a few of my own ideas to it. Do you have goals for the month? year? 1/2 yr? Do you set goals for every subject or just the 3 r's? ( i have a 1st grader LOL)

[oceanbaby]

I'm going to be doing this is in the next few weeks, and will try to remember to post about it here. I'm actually going to be scheduling it to start during the summer, since we will have more free time (ds1's two day a week co-op ends next week until the Fall). I'm hoping that if I get a routine in place over the next few months that we will be able to keep the momentum once September is here and all the new classes start.

[bendingbirch]

I am a Waldorf homeschooling mother (see my blog www.theparentingpassageway.com) and will also be taking time this summer to write my curriculum for fall - I will have a second grader and a five year old Kindergartner. I am so looking forward to planning things!

[LauraLoo]

These threads are so inspiring for me to go out and buy, buy, buy! lol!

In the next few weeks I'm going to conference with ds to find out what his educational goals are for next year. I'd like to tie in some ideas with financial management, but will wait to see if I get his buy in. I think we've determined a basic plan for next year based on his feedback this year. It's pretty high level at this point.

Science - We're doing a biology course this summer with dd and then I've laid basic ground work for an Earth and Space science curriculum this fall that I've pieced together. I need some work here in figuring out some field trips and I'm going to order some experiment stuff from NASA. I've already collected a mass of DVDs.

History - History of the World Middle Ages since we're moving along the continuum. I don't think we did nearly enough fun stuff with History last year -- mostly reading and a few art projects. I could definitely get more creative here.

Math - Miquon and Singapore. I'm going to also see about tying in some Living Math.

Art - Artisitic Pursuits -- which will hopefully go well with the History component.

Music -- Violin. Also would like to start to study period music and composers.

Language Arts -- This is my biggest challenge in trying to provide something that seems cohesive to me and interesting for ds. I'd love to be able to tie something in to the other disciplines, so it doesn't become too much. I need to spend most of my planning time here figuring out how to do this.

Sign Language -- I've been dragging my feet on this. DS wants to do this, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. I think I need a DVD / CD-Rom kind of format because picture books just don't get the conversation stuff well enough. I've contemplated putting him in a co-op class, but would kind of like to avoid this if possible. Maybe it'll have to wait another year.....