Lesson Planning

Oh lesson planning a homeschool mom can get lost in the lesson planning.  Here is my advice - DO NOT PLAN MORE THAN A MONTH AT A TIME!!!! (especially if this is your first year!)

It's so easy to plan out the year and then feel so very discouraged when 3 weeks into the year you are behind and every days lesson plan reminds you of how behind you are!  Don't do this to yourself.  I recommend a very general yearly plan.  For example, if there are 120 lessons in math and you plan to school for 9 months than the goal should be about 13 lessons a month.  Each month check to see if you are making this goal and adjust as needed.  

I plan a month at a time and this includes making a list of all necessary books, arts supplies, baking supplies, and whatever else I might need in the month.  I also check up on the goals for each subject and if I'm making the progress I was hoping for.  

Then every Sunday evening I spend about 30 minutes planning out the week and making sure I know what's coming at me for the week!  

There are a million different ways you can lesson plan and I'm not about to list them all here!  Etsy has tons of printable with these pages, there are free pages, digital pages, computer programs that will do the planning for you, or paper planners like The Well Planned Gal that you can check out as well.  Find the lesson plan book that makes the most sense to your brain.  The important part is simply to keep your lesson plans.  Don't write your plans on a white board then you have no record of what you are accomplishing in school.  

Lesson plans are one of the areas that is a to each his own.  Different personality types need different types of lesson plans.  Some only write in pencil, some like a different color pen for each subject matter, some are very creative and make their own beautiful bullet journal lesson plans.  Do what works best for you and don't be afraid to scrap something that isn't working and start over with a new plan if you hate what you are using (it'll make the year much better!)

At some point I'll probably write a few blog posts on what specifically I use but for now these are the general ideas on lesson planning!