Prep and Planning: Intro week 8/1, School 8/11

One of the primary issues I face as a homeschooling mom is that I work during the time my kid is in school.

I can stop to help her briefly with something... and there's several things we do in the evening when I'm off... but for the most part, she has to work through it on her own. This isn't so easy even for an older kid, let alone one who is turning 12 in two days.

It means that on one hand, I need to be sure she is doing the work I feel is required for academic learning (which I personally consider important), yet I am not babysitting her with it, nor am I supervising more than "from the other room which is my home office".

As a result, my idea (eventually, because I thought long and hard about this) has been to mix pre-assigned work with casual, flexible scheduling. Like so:

Make up assignments for the whole week, rather than by day. She has the whole week to do them. Once something is finished it is crossed off and there is that much more free time she'll have. If she worked long and hard each day and finished all the week's work by Wednesday at 10am, then she'd be "off" until the next Monday. But if Friday arrived and she had a bunch of work unfinished, she'd be working nights and weekend to get it done.

This way if she has to stop on something because she needs my help later, it's really no big deal. That way if she "feels like" doing art but not math at any given moment, that's fine. That way she has a lot of control over her own schedule. She is responsible for getting it all done by the end of the week and asking for help where she is stuck and the textbooks and workbooks aren't clear. But I'm letting her flex.

So if she wants to work from 10-2 on Monday and then play World of Warcraft for the rest of the day, as long as she gets all the assigned work done--and well--by the end of the week, I really don't care. Should she end up not getting stuff done then I'd start caring, but we're beginning with some trust, and me looking over her list of assignments done/remaining every couple days.

I'm a project manager by trade at the moment and the job is somewhat similar. Deadlines are as absolute as possible; sometimes you only work a little and sometimes you work every waking hour, because the job is to get done what needs doing by the time it is due. Your butt in a chair 9-5 is not the point. Until the last few years, I've always worked in entrepreneurial start-up companies where you have too few people, too much work, wear a dozen 'hats' in terms of duties, and do what needs doing just because it needs doing. I'm a big fan of competence-based anything.

Over at Western Governor's University, sponsored by industry leaders and many Governors, it's an online college with the same philosophy. You have to learn the material and prove you know it. But how long it takes you is up to you. You can do it faster and get done sooner and it's cheaper that way. You can adjust your schedule as needed (within reason). You are expected to put at least 15 hours a week into it (the main reason I am not doing it... I haven't got that), but how you arrange everything is up to you. They don't care about your hours, or your butt in a chair for four years, or whatever. They care that you know the material.

That's what education should be about. Some people (like me) can read a book at light speed and understand something very well and be fluent at using that knowledge. Other people can do rote work for three years to 'get it'. It takes what it takes. The point is supposed to be education, not wasting all your time for 12 of the most formative years of your life. I think the whole Carnegie system of measuring schooling by hours rather than education is one of the fundamental flaws in American schooling.

Here's what I did to prepare the lessons:

1. In a simple spreadsheet (OpenOffice is free & for all platforms) I made a tab for a study topic.

2. I made some 'sections' in the left column for different kinds of curriculum materials.

3. I made a column for weekly dates, with holiday notes, and on each row, put the dates for that week.

That's a 'template', and I save that for use on all the topics. Here's a screenshot of the simple template:



4. I made a tab for every topic and copied the template (click corner edge between '1' and 'A' to copy whole sheet) into every topic page.

5. Right-click on the tabs at bottom and rename each to the topics.



6. Then I put in the curriculum we have (so far) for each subject, on the left column. If I was planning something but didn't have it yet, I just wrote: planning: before it... so I won't forget. :-)

7. To the right, I made a column for each curriculum-item we had, such as each different book, and then a column for 'other' (like audio, video, field trips, hands-on, etc.).

Then I went through each book (or curriculum source) in detail. I considered how much seemed reasonable to get through per-week given all the other subjects. I considered how much of the book I felt we should get done by the end of the school year. I considered how much of each page/exercise/etc. really "needed" to be done in my opinion to demonstrate that she knew the material. I considered how it might mesh (or not) with what else was going on that week in that subject. If there was more than one major book she was working on, and some week had a big test or what seemed like a lot of work, I made that week easier for the other books. That sort of thing.

8. Then on each weekly row, on the column for that book, I typed in an assignment. I did this for each major curriculum item we had.

9. Then at right, in the column for 'other' stuff, I wrote in those too. As I get more of these (Bittorrent piratebay.org is my friend!) I'll write them in.

Everything is subject to change if convenient or needed. I'm not trying to set this stone -- I'm just trying to make a very clear outline that we can follow for convenience.

At the end of the year, adding in stuff we do on the fly as time goes on, I'll have a complete list of our days in school, our detailed curriculum, her assignments and projects, etc.

Here's a couple example subject pages:





Do you want a copy of this template? You can right-click, save-link-as to your hard drive.
Template for MS Excel here. Template for Open Office here.

Each Monday morning she comes in and I pull up the spreadsheet and write down the weekly assignments for each topic. As she goes along, she crosses out what she has finished. She shows it to me if she wants, or saves it to show me at night or end of the week. When everything's crossed out, she's "free". ;-)

We found these two nifty white-board-like things at Walmart. They are squares, one is pink and one blue (neat-o). They have two strong 'magnets' so you can attach a note or paper if you need to, is that groovy or what.

Here's a terrible web-cam pic of the assignment board, unreadable here alas. Basically I have each topic at left and then the various assignment(s) down the board. A small column at right lists daily chores and any weekly projects.