How To Take Back Your Day: Less Stressing, More Doing.
Having completed 4 years of homeschooling, and now into our 5th, I feel I can safely say that finding the balance between teaching your kids, maintaining your sanity, taking care of normal day to day stuff, and still finding time for yourself, feels absolutely impossible some days.
I am a tactile person. Digital planning is my nemesis. I like to put my hands on what I’m working on, sort to piles, file as necessary, you name it. Juggling lots of information in various tabs just isn’t my jam. Subsequently, most teacher’s planners can feel just as irritating as navigating 30 tabs while planning your vacation. I want to SEE everything in front of me. And while I stumbled upon one that made life a little easier by letting me break my year down into semesters, it still just wasn’t doing it. We’re flexible, I like to be able to take a random day off and head to the zoo. Take a day and enjoy the sun (something we don’t see much of out here in Pittsburgh). Take a long weekend to one of the surrounding cities. And so, when a planner locks me into dates, and we get off our dates, I’m even more infuriated by having to do school on August 3rd while looking at July 29th’s plan.
And that’s exactly what happened about a month and a half into our homeschool year this year, when my husband packed up our daughter for a few days, midweek, for an amusement park trip. And then a month later, announced work was sending him to the state next door, and we could tag along and field trip up that way. Being that many days off course so early in the school year was bound to deter me from wanting to do school by the time the colder months set in. So, my brain went into overtime, and I started looking for something different. When I couldn’t find it, I made it.
As I planned this school year, I gave my daughter a choice. School year round with less days during the week, or school all 5 days a week, but have more complete time off. Logical little thing that she is, she said school year round, because it only takes us a few hours at max anyway, and she still has all day to do stuff, so she’d rather less days per week. 4 days a week it was.
Our state requires 180 days (or 900/990) hours per school year. I divided it by 4 (days per week she wanted to school) and came out with 45 weeks worth of school we’d need to do.
I found these file jackets at Staples. A 10 pack, with 5 colors. I only used 5. I had some left over sticky labels from a Target dollar find a year or two back that I put on each one, and tucked a card in for each start date this year. I like that I can change those dates in following years. I also took packing tape and went around the outside edge since they’re just sort of folded, and I wanted to help them hold up for more than 1 year. By the time we implemented this system, we were 2 weeks away from finishing blue term, so I didn’t put a start date card in there.
I took our previously calculated 45 weeks, and divided it by 5 (the number of colored file jackets I had). That left me with 9 weeks per colored jacket. So, each colored term got 9 weeks worth of school in it. That was represented by 9 file folders with their weeks written up top.
This is the framework for our system.
We use Mathematical Reasoning from the Critical Thinking Company for math. I just pull out the pages and put them in the folders. I assign 4 days worth of school per week. So, 4 days worth of math, 4 days worth of language arts, and then science, history, etc as we do it. The great part about this system is it works for doing with your child, or works for giving them some more independence, which is where we’re at. If you use something that doesn’t allow you to pull a sheet out, don’t worry. I have a few other curriculums like that, I’ll walk you through what I did for those in a minute.
For those that are giving some freedom for completion, I have found using stop sign stickers helpful. I made mine, but I’m sure you can order them online, or use a different consistent sticker. I use these for when a page of math comes up that has a new concept. While there are instructions, I want to make sure that she catches the new concept and doesn’t just read it the way SHE THINKS it should be read, rather than how it’s actually supposed to be read. So this is just her reminder that she should come chat with me to make sure she understands what she’s doing, or to allow me the chance to teach her what is coming up. The curriculum is spiral based, so she usually understands 70% of the new concept already, which is why it’s so easy to think you know what you’re supposed to do because the work looks familiar. We encountered that just today when she read that she should find the multiples of a number, and instead she started finding the factors of the number.
So, moving on to the inside of our folders.
Remember earlier how I mentioned about curriculum that you can’t just tear a page out, or print, and you need to assign from a book? Check out the left side of this folder. See those white half sheets? That covers stuff stuck in a book.
The bottom is from Curiosity Chronicles. We’re doing Ancient History this year. There is a chapter to read/listen to (we do the audiobook, so we listen to it). If you choose to do the student book, there are pages in there. We choose not to. There are 6 additional reading books referenced in this curriculum. In the teacher’s guide, it tells you what pages in which books to reference for that chapter. Then, it gives you a Minecraft prompt at the end. My daughter LOVES Minecraft, thus this curriculum’s selling point. It’s usually relatively simple. So, in this case, she was assigned chapter 16. So, she listens to chapter 16 in the book. Then, she has the Minecraft pompt. I list all the pages for the additional reference books applicable for that prompt, and leave her a space to fill in her coordinates for her build so she can find it later. I typed this up for all of the prompts in the curriculum for Ancients. And I’ll do it again next year for Medieval. I print it, and then cut it so there’s only one prompt given a week. And I put it in the folder. Tucked in with the paper clip up top.
Now, if you’re trying to get your kid to be a bit more independent in their planning, I’ll have more later on how to handle things like that audiobook chapter that has been downloaded as mp3 files.
You’ll also see our science in there. This is from Earth Party. The link is only for the teacher’s guide, so be sure to snag the student book too if you go for this. I typed this up based on what the teacher’s guide had for instructions to do, so this is just from a google document. Below is a better shot of what this looks like before I slice it.
This is week 7 of the Earth Party curriculum. I go through the week and type up what needs to get done. And then, I divide it up with those lines (page breaks) in Google Docs. Those teal numbers at the end of each header? We found that if she has something like this, where this is 1 week’s worth of science, but it matters the order some things happen in, if I put those numbers, when she schedules out what to do, she knows what one needs to come first. If it has no numbers, like the last one, then she knows it can happen whenever that week. In this case, our Outschool class is a flex class. If it were at a specific date and time, I would include that on there for her so she could put it in her folder as such.
Let’s look above, at the 2nd item. “Continue Work on Cross Chapter Exploration.” For this curriculum, this is a project that happens over the whole of the unit study. I make sure there is one put in each week so she can use it as much as she needs/wants. She can tuck it into her Monday folder (we’ll get to that) and then, after she’s done school on Monday, if she has more to do on it for that week, she can tuck it into another day’s folder. I did this for all the weeks. She can do all of science on 1 day if she’d like. But, by provided those page breaks, those are places she can cut on the line and divide up her science into multiple days that will provide her a stopping space. Some of her classes have reading in it, or specific projects that go with the reading, so it’s important to group those things together if it will be easier all done at once.
I also made those guys. She takes an ASL class through Udemy. On the back of each of those laminated tags is the website, with her username and password. Typing.com for her typing. Same with Prodigy math. There is also one for spelling. Our spelling curriculum, Spelling Power, doesn’t really have anything I can tuck in there. So, I toss these in her file folder. If I want her to do 3 days of spelling, then I toss 3 in. If it’s only 1, then I toss in only 1. You can make them for practicing instruments, or other lessons that need to happen. A way to help mentally track you need to do something that doesn’t provide you really anything to put into the folder. A place holder for that subject.
Earlier I mentioned how we handle links. Let’s get into that. I made a spreadsheet in Google Sheets. On page 1 of the sheet is the weeks put out, in groups of 9. I put them in colored boxes to match our folders.
I have shared this file with her, so she can access it from her Google Drive (she’s almost 11, for reference of independence. I’m not sure I would have started this as an independent assignment any earlier than this). Notice all of those weeks are written in blue? Take a look at the bottom of that spreadsheet, notice the other tabs? Cover is what I’m on. If you hover over a week, below will happen. In this case, I’m hovering over week 12. If you click on the “Links!E13” it will bring you to the sheet titled “links” and to cell “E13”. You can do this for any sheet. Insert a hyper link in that cell, name it what you’d like, and in the address type the name of the sheet, followed by an exclamation point, and the coordinates for the cell you want it to stop on.
Now, let’s click that link and see where it takes us.
Why does this system work for us outside of my need to be tactile when planning?
Well, my daughter is super visual. I would not be shocked to find she has an ADHD without hyperactivity diagnosis. She works well with what she can touch, she likes having control of her days, and she likes to have a firm understanding of when she’s done. This meets all of that. Even without the possibility for ADHD, kids thrive in situations where they can have control over their life, within reason. So, when you give them parameters to work within, and then let them choose, it helps. Knowing it’s up to them how hard they have to work that day. I’ve found she often times is willing to work harder because she’s scheduled something extra in anticipation of what’s coming later that week.
For us, we have taken this a step further and she has a binder with 7 folders in it, labeled Monday through Sunday. On Friday evening we sit down and pull out the following weeks file folder. She looks over the items in it, and we talk about anything going on the following week (appointments that may keep us out of the house, field trips with friends, etc) and she schedules her work accordingly, by tucking it into her daily pockets, for what she thinks she can accomplish and when. When she finishes that week’s work, she puts it back in the file folder it came from, and files it to the back of the colored file jacket. Here in PA, I need to put together a portfolio showing samples of her work. So, I can pull from these towards the end of the year to grab those samples.
Our extra agreements… She has 4 days worth of school in these folders. If she completes it in 2 days, she has done 4 school days (she is always learning stuff about art, reading, writing, etc, so I’m not worried about us actually doing educational things 180 days of the year). If she takes 7 days to do 4 days of school, she has done 4 school days. I do not incentivize it taking longer, or punish her for being efficient. Sometimes she’s super into it and knocks it out fast, sometimes it’s a crap week and she takes all 7 days. Whatever. We have start dates on the front of our colored folders (you can see them back at the top image). If she gets 9 weeks worth of school done in 4 weeks and wants 5 weeks off, then she knows when the next term starts. We need to be starting that term by that date. I’m not willing to be more than 9 weeks behind, if you will. If she wants to finish blue term early and start on green term so she’s done with school earlier this year, so be it. She can go about it however she wants, as long as she’s at least on schedule. I love that if we take some time off, it doesn’t mess up my dates. I can move certain subjects to future folders if need be while allowing her to complete other stuff that week. It allows you to be super flexible, or super rigid. Whatever you’d like. It allows for book curriculum, worksheets, projects, field trips, TPT stuff, or even assigning games for school that week. You name it. And at the end of the day, it’s all about making the days easier, so you can know what your week holds. And with kids feeling like they get a say in how it’s planned out, they fight you on it a whole lot less. Leaving you time to get the things you need to, done.
