What did we do today?

I don’t lesson plan, not in the way most homeschoolers do. Lesson planning suffocates me, it truly does. That does not mean I don’t plan out what we are going to do. I have a 6 month plan, things that I would love for us to do, books I want to read, places we want to visit and concepts I would like for each child to learn. I’m not bound by these plans, rather, they give me a sense of organization. In reality, we may not do any of those things I had planned because things are always changing for us (actually we’ve done quite a few though). I may have wanted us to visit the science museum here in town and explore some subjects having to do with the museum, when actually, we were given the wonderful gift of railroad museum passes and so we’re going to veer in that direction. So we can always change things up, the point is, I have a semi-plan.

Every day is a learning day for us. We are *always* learning something (like tonight we re-watched the movie “October Sky” so naturally Daddy and the kids will be making *another* rocket soon.) So what I’ve done is instead of creating lesson plans, I have a notebook and I live by the “what did we do today?” lesson planning method. I go backwards. Some days it is astounding what we have accomplished, some days are just full of living, but I attempt to write down each day. Sometimes days whiz by and I forget to track them, so I just go back and write down the most important things we did all week, no matter how you do it, this is just a way of feeling a bit more organized if you begin to homeschool more eclectically. And on that note…this is pretty much the most organized I get when it comes to homeschool planning and record keeping. If you’ve come looking for amazing organization and planning “how to’s”…then I’m not the gal for you. I’m sorry 🙂

I live in a state where we don’t have extremely strict rules about homeschooling. I also do not belong to a charter school where I know you have to submit lesson plans. I have nothing against charter schools, they just don’t fit my style of homeschooling.

This “What did we do today?” method is also a way of instilling some freedom into your homeschool day. Instead of jumping from subject to subject, unable to really soak in what you are learning, drowning in textbooks, we can take a step back and examine how we are teaching our kids. Then, on the other hand, the days when you feel like you did nothing…you can take a moment of reflection, write down some thoughts on the day, and realize all the amazing unscripted life lessons you accomplished!

 

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