Lesson plans done...with one exception. It seems that when I ordered our curriculum last February (right at the beginning of my diet, mind you) my fat/calorie deprived brain glitched right over 3rd grade phonics. I spent a good fifteen minutes tearing this house apart looking for the phonics book, and then for the invoice for the order, which is also mysteriously missing in action. One of the boys must have used it for scrap paper?
We use Our Lady of Victory School's curriculum for the most part, so I called them to have someone look up the invoice from that order. They're always super helpful with any of the issues that I always seem to encounter. Of course I never ordered the phonics book. The lady was able to place the order for me and it should be here some time next week. This has been another great life lesson for me against procrastination. If I had done lesson plans as soon as we got the books in the mail I could've saved Aidan the catching-up he'll now have to do.
Our first year of homeschooling was the year Aidan started first grade. It was so incredibly intimidating and I had myself talked out of doing it about a hundred times before we even started. Even after being homeschooled myself, I didn't know if I could do it. So I ordered lesson plans from OLV (at a salty $85) to save myself some confusion. I figured as long as someone was telling me exactly what to do it wouldn't be so bad. Right? Well, a few weeks into the school year we discovered a routine that worked for us, which was not at all like the school-assembled plans or schedule. So every week I took the assigned pages of each subject and rewrote the new lesson plan on a dry erase board.
This year Gavin starts first grade. All I needed to do was modify the plans we already had--on paper this time, not on a board....and add in the books that have changed since Aidan guinea-pigged his way through that first year. OLV changed their phonics program. I also switched out OLV's history for Seton's, and added geography.
Lesson plans get used and abused around here...plenty of coffee spills and baby scribbles. The single staple initially holding these together gave out by the time second semester rolled around. So I put the plans in a binder and added tabs for ease of use. I love tabs. You may be able to tell that I modified the plans from a daily plan to weekly.
After that first year of panic I flipped ends of the spectrum, as is my wont. I decided I could write out our own lesson plans, no sweat. Easy peasy lemon squeezy (as Aidan is fond of saying). Those plans were also finished by the skin of my teeth, with the ink barely dry the morning we started.
Our lesson planner comes from Michele Quigley's shop (which is now closed for the rest of the summer, having sold out of planners). It's simply divided in an unlabeled grid so I can organize it as I like. This year, knowing that planning was no easy task, I started earlier. Procrastination took over, and here we are.
3rd Grade, Week 1
As I surveyed the workload Aidan has this year, I'm seriously considering schooling all year long. Perhaps burn-out can be avoided by a lighter summer schedule, taking two to three weeks off here and there? Brains may stay more refreshed and forget less with shorter breaks? Definitely something to consider.
At this point, I'm just thankful to be ready for Tuesday.
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