Process for preparing to teach....

[kathymuggle]

What is your process for preparing to teach?

Where do you pull your info from, and how do you NOT waste all sorts of time doing it?

Do you plan ahead -a day, a week, a month, a year???

Here is my struggle: I seem to waste huge amounts of time looking for info I want to present. Sometimes I even do it as the kids are waiting. For example - this morning I was doing mean, mode and median with my DD. I could not remember what mode is - so I ended up putting everything on pause for 10 minutes while I went to the internet and looked it up. I do this all the time (although sometimes I get them to look up stuff as well). Yes I modelled "finding out the answer" - but we do this often and it causes us to lose flow.

I also really love learning (and am excited by it), and I am a little ADHD ish - so I tend to go off on tangents. If I do not know something, I find I need to know it "now". As mentionned above, it causes "flow" issues. Anyone else struggle with this - or figured out a way to resove it?

Kathy

[earthmama369]

I am very much in the middle of my learning process, especially as my oldest keeps throwing us curveballs.

But I do value my experience as a public school teacher because the one thing the BEST program (obnoxious as it is) is good at is creating good prep habits. You have to detail every single step and your reasoning for your portfolio, which is more than you generally need to do, but it helps to go overboard and then simplify as you get better at it.

I keep a notebook, although a computer works better for many people. I like writing because it slows me down so I really think about what I'm doing. For this week, I wrote out the days of the week, brainstormed a list of activities and overall goals, figured out our social schedule, and then plugged everything in and moved it around until it fit. I planned a couple extra activities per day so we would have extras if dd finished everything and still wanted to do more.

Oops, kids calling. Back in a bit.

[earthmama369]

OK, so I covered my process....

Where do you pull your info from, and how do you NOT waste all sorts of time doing it?

I don't mean this flippantly, but I recognize that my time is valuable and I don't have a ton of it to waste. I use Google a LOT, but I only take a quick glance at sites I find to see if they look like they'll suit my needs or not. If not, I move on. I have a few places I use consistently as resources: the library, because our children's librarians are amazing and will go out of their way to find the "perfect" book for us; www.nationalgeographic.com; www.forsmallhands.com; a free lapbooking site; www.youtube.com (some great children's videos there).

Do you plan ahead -a day, a week, a month, a year???

I help plan our weekly co-op, and we plan a year ahead by necessity, because field trips require advance reservations and we have an "arc" we like to follow. At home, I plan about a week ahead. That allows a good combination of flexibility and preparedness for us.

I can't really speak to the tangent issues. I do that when cleaning, but when we're learning together, I tend to put off anything I can't find quickly, or I figure out what I'm not really familiar with and take notes on it ahead of time. (I'm a Capricorn. We're obnoxious note-takers like that.)

I guess that would be my suggestion. If you look over the details of what you want to present, you could make yourself a cheat sheet ahead of time with quick answers and definitions for the things you aren't completely sure you've internalized.

[fadedgirl]

: Desperately seeking advice in this department as well!

[Lillian J]

We unschooled, so I don't have much to offer on your main question, but I just want to say that I think the modeling you're doing about getting answers is going to be a lot more valuable than you may realize. Or at least that was certainly the case for me . And one of the main things my son wrote in his college application essays was how valuable he felt it had been to learn how to pursue his curiosity and do research about things that interested him. - Lillian

[ahdoula]

I used to have the same problem, now I plan a week in advance and make sure I am familiar and comfortable with what we are covering for that week- I look for supplementing websites and books from the library on the Saturday before the starting week. I write the basics down in a lesson book but then I keep all my book lists, website links, movie resources, activities list, project plans etc on my blog under that particular entry. This is partly becuase I realize I will be repeating this whole process with #2 and 3 and want to have everything I used with dd #1 at my finger tips when the time comes! Anyway, since I started things have had much better flow, we get things done 2x faster and the kids attention usually lasts through the lesson this way!

[UUMom]

Gads, I am so bad at this prep thang!

Sometimes my little one will ask about something and I say, "Let me check that out" and then I forget.

It's much easier if I know they ae super-interested in, say the Romanovs.

I do love people who plan well. Try as I might to deny it, planning when our kids have interests is a good thing. That I suck at it...well, that's why I beg my teens for help,

I would say that Google is a fine art. Poeple might think, no, but let me tell you...lol...I think it is.

There is so much awesome info, beyond anything I can figure out there, and wouldn't it be cool to actually be prepared? lol

Major hugolas.

[kathymuggle]

Thanks all!

I am still mulling over how to work on flow....

Kathy

[mamamelia]

could you designate an hour on the night before to prepare the lesson so you have everything ready before hand? that's what i'll probably start to do even though we are not doing formal lessons for at least another year. i find when i walk into something prepared, i am far more relaxed.

i also have ADD tendencies and so i NEED to be prepared - it's not a bonus, it's a necessity. i can never focus on anything for longer than a day in general, and if i DO do that then everything else turns to shit in the mean time. i literally can only focus on one thing at a time. it's annoying to say the least.

[mommy68]

It depends on what we are doing as far as how it is planned. I'm bad about planning something and then not doing it as planned so I don't plan very far ahead at all. But in my house it depends on which child you are talking about. The oldest have stuff planned out and the youngest I do core subjects planned each day and depending on her mood (and mine ).

When we do lapbooking I do plan those and we work on them daily until finished.

The main thing we have planned each week are activities done outside the home like swim lessons, sports, homeschool co-op and stuff. I'm very bad about not planning our little field trips and I tend to do things like that totally spur of the moment.