Looking for a planning tool

[bdavis337]

I'm trying to somewhat plan this next semester - we're fairly new and have eased into hs'ing slowly over the last 6 weeks. My son and I are both ready for more structure but I can't make that happen without some longer-term planning so I know where we're going AND have it divided up into manageable portions. I'm having trouble coming up with a schedule/planning format that makes sense though.

Those of you that schedule/lesson plan/plan at all, what do you use?

What I'd like is something that allows me to break down month/week/day. We usually do 4 days/week of school with day 5 open to fill with anything we didn't get to during the previous 4 days, and we do not school on the weekends.

[meetoo]

http://www.homeschoolskedtrack.com/H...isplayLogin.do

[Momma Aimee]

Originally Posted by meetoo

http://www.homeschoolskedtrack.com/H...isplayLogin.do

i was gonna say that too

i am currently stuggling with excatly how to plan too -- but it is more a ? of deciding what, when and how much and so on ...

[dawningmama]

I've used Homeschool Skedtrack too. It's one of the best online tools I've seen.

We moved to schedule of 6 units of 6 weeks each (with a week or two off each unit, so each one is actually 7-8 weeks long with 6 weeks of work) this year. I'm liking this schedule better for us and it's pushing me to make sure the more academic stuff we do is interdisciplinary in nature. I started my schedule in Big Picture Mode and then planned down to more specifics at the start of each unit. I've had to make modifications (long division took longer than expected so I extended that, no one was really all that interested in Westward Expansion so we breezed through that, etc) but I left us plenty of wiggle room for that kind of thing.

[theretohere]

If you prefer something to print and hash out on paper instead of online- I really like the free forms at http://www.donnayoung.org
I showed some of how I used them to organize here: http://concordiaclassicalacademy.blo...onal-post.html

[Savoir Faire]

I head over to the teacher supply stores and get one of their cheaper schedules to use. It keeps everything in one place.

[heatherdeg]

Originally Posted by Savoir Faire

I head over to the teacher supply stores and get one of their cheaper schedules to use. It keeps everything in one place.

This is what I do. In fact, I sometimes find the ones geared to preschool to be a better fit for what I need.

[dotnetdiva]

I love, love, love Homeschool Skedtrack! I love how flexible it is, yet I can still totally plan and see where we'd be months from now if I stick to schedule. If we never get to a subject, off it goes to the next semester. So many convenient features.

[bdavis337]

thanks, ladies! I do like the paper forms on the Donna Young site, but I worry about planning too far ahead, missing something and then having all these changes to make to my hand written forms. But, since we're not grading and our school days vary from week to week, I need only the basics. I really should probably plan no smaller than weekly.

[elizawill]

i don't know if this helps at all, but i simply divide our curriculum by 180 days (which is how long we do school for). so for example, if explode the code has 95 pages in each book, and you plan to cover books 4 & 5 for the current school year - simply divide that number by your intended school days to see how many pages you should cover each week. does that make sense? i don't use a boxed curriculum, but for several subjects we do use a specific curriculum - so this works well for us (ex: math has a 170 lessons, so we do one lesson a day, with a little wiggle room). i also add in books & readers, but that is based on what we're studying and it adjust according to my kid's natural interest in the topic at hand. here's what i use to plan our week. i simply "X" through the box if we having nothing planned that day (we don't do all subjects daily obviously)...

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view...d=1353285&da=y

i have 2 children, but my ds only has the 3r's currently on the schedule...although he does learn a lot more for sure. the planner is 2 pages...i print it on the front and back.

hth.

[lorrielink]

This may not be specific enough but for me it works perfectly as I'm eclectic and need an outline and stucture to my plans and thoughts but cannot follow a full plan.
for outlines and list making I use Checkvist

for agendas and time planning I use Todoist

[onyxravnos]

i actually got a student planer from office max and then on the side i put our 'subjects' such as crafts, coloring/painting, story time activities, baking, whatever and then it's all broken down week by week. for me so far this has been perfect as i wanted something NOT online and it let me keep track so i can look back and see what we have done.