Blogging...again!!

I knew I would do this. I just KNEW I would start a blog, but not follow through with it! When I started this blog, I told a friend that I would either be obsessive about blogging or neglect it. Maybe I can somehow find the middle ground.

I think I'll start blogging again by sharing how our school year has been coming along.

This year, I decided to do something drastically different. I made PLANS!! Wow. What a difference having plans have made in how much learning is taking place in our homeschool this year. Donna Young's site has been the main source of my planning information and forms.

http://donnayoung.org/forms/help/usingqup.htm

Using a 9 week planning page from Donna Young's website has been the most helpful tool I've used this year.

http://donnayoung.org/f10/planner-f/f-school-pdf/quarter_v1.pdf

I've planned for each and every subject for both boys using the 9 week planner. I've had to tweak the 9 week plans for some subjects, but even with tweaks, we've stayed pretty much on schedule.

Planning breaks has been helpful also. Usually, we just take breaks as needed, but I found that we were often times taking to many breaks. We'd take a break when our brick-n-mortor school friends were out of school and also when we simply needed a break for whatever reason. I have scheduled our breaks around our brick-n-mortor school friend's breaks. If we absolutely need a break at another time, then the boys have to make up the lost time during the schduled break or on a weekend.

Up until this year, I had always used a daily checklist for the boys. I would not have specific plans on the daily checklist. It would just have subjects listed, so they could check off each subject.

This year, I decided to use a Weekly Checklist from Donna Young's site.

http://donnayoung.org/f10/planner-f/f-school-pdf/edwkruld.pdfhttp://

My boys like having the little bubble in each box. They use a colored pen to color in each bubble as the finish a subject for the day.

I am allowing my 16yo 10th grade son to use this weekly checklist as a weekly guide. He is allowed to double up on some subjects (other than math) some days and skip another subject the day he doubles up on something. Also, if he gets busy (or lazy;) during the week and gets behind, I'm OK with that as long as he finishes the work on the weekend. He's doing great with this responsibility.


Also, I've never *officialy* counted school days until this year. Donna Young's site also has a calendar I printed and placed in each boy's binder, which is where I also keep the nine week planners.

http://donnayoung.org/f10/calendar-f/cal-sc-10-11/blue-08-10.pdf

I will share in another blog post exactly what resources we have used (meaning used and dropped or kept) so far this year.

Greta: