Planner Section 5: School

Lesson Planning Diagram

As a homeschool family, this section is one of the most important to keeping my days running smoothly. The first page in the section is a weekly plan. I made a list of the subject we wanted to cover and the time needed to commit to each per lesson (usually 15-25 min.) Then I made a chart with five columns, one for each day of the week. I divided the columns into three rows: morning, afternoon, evening.

Morning activities tend to be done with all of the children, afternoon activities are done when the baby is asleep and evening activities are for the whole family.

Finally, I plugged the subject names from the first list into this chart. It became clear that I was trying to fit too much in, so I limited our morning activities to an hour and a half, the afternoon to two hours and the evening activities to an hour.

In the end, I had to prioritize the list of subjects* I was trying to study with the kids and eventually reduce the number of days we do art and history, the two lowest priorities right now. As the kids get older and more independent we'll make more time for these subjects. At this point I just want them to learn the basics and learn to love exploring my Father's world.

*My list of subjects for 1st grade is Bible, Reading, Math, Spanish, Science/Nature Study, Music, Cursive Handwriting, History.