My Homeschool Planner

Well, since I've been showing you a bit of our homeschool routine I thought I might as well show you the gem of the crop.  I'm going to take you through my entire homeschool planner.

I've had a couple different lesson plans within my notebook that I've used and since homeschooling needs are ever changing I want to make sure to show you both versions. I hope you will find them beneficial to you.  I'll go through the notebook with my original planner and then at the bottom I will show you a new revised planner I just created to help me get even more organized with things.

Hooray for organization!


Well, to start things off I created this cover.  I just found a free frame, background and silhouette online and put them together to make my cover.  I used this same theme to organize all of my binders and drawers etc. They all have the gray chevron with the happy pink frame that just makes me smile.

Open it up and here's what you see:
This is the first version of my planner.  This is what I access the most so that's why it's on top. I created this last year and it worked very well for me at the time.  It gets broken down into each day (Thursday-Friday is on the back side) with the subjects listed at the side.  I also included in type some of the things that were more consistent with our curriculum, so I didn't have to write it in all the time.

After my planner I have my God's Purpose Of Education Handout that I received at one of my teacher training way back when I was a kindergarten assistant teacher at a Christian school out in Arizona for over 8 years.  We got lots of resources and training in my years there and this handout was found one day in my pile of things I saved.  I'm keep it in here as Biblical reminders of why education is important and helps me remember the ultimate goal: raising up a generation of good character, who's heart is towards God and His ways.

After that I have a couple table of contents or chapter guides for some of the curriculum I've chosen to use.  This helps me at a glance to check what's up and coming.  Sometimes I'll mark down the month or week we did something, so I know where we stand on everything.  This has really helped me in saving time when it comes to planning next week. I can quickly pull from these Table of Contents of my main books: math, writing, Bible, etc. and have a better jumping off point.

Next up is my Character Training Lesson Plan.  I created this in the future hopes of starting to do a character focus for each week or month and work it into our plans.  We haven't used it yet because my girls are still so little and we're just focusing on key traits like being 'nice' to our sister. Ha! But I thought I would just give you a peek at what I've prepared for the future too.  It's important to have a vision. "Without vision the people perish" says the Bible. 

Lastly, to organize my old lesson plans I put two small sticky note tabs in the back of my binder.  I place the 'old' lesson plans back there as well as keep on hand all my 'new' unused lesson plans for upcoming weeks.  Makes it easy for me to look back to see what we focused on.

I hope you've enjoyed peeking through my planner.  I'm still on this journey of learning to organize my homeschooling life with my girls.  I can only share what works for us...and I'm sure I will find better ways along the way. But I hope this inspires you to organize your planner.

Happy Homeschooling and God Bless!

Heather Joy

Bug Week: Day 2 of Butterflies

Here we are of day two of bugs. My girls really like butterflies so we had another day of fun learning about butterflies!

Today's activities were focused on how butterflies eat but because today is April Fools Day we started off reading Arthur's April Fools. Around here it's a fun day mostly because it's Grandpa's birthday but the girls are getting old enough to try to start learning about the fun side of April Fools too. This book was okay, but I used it mainly as a topic for discussion of how our pranks or tricks need to be fun for everyone, especially the person you're pranking. We talked about how it's important to do this while not disrespecting the person or making them feel embarrassed in any way. We just want jokes that get a little laugh from everyone. So, we used this book as a way to talk about how we could have done things differently. We mentioned how Binky Barnes was trying to belittle and bully people and that should never be our intention and how Arthur maybe shouldn't have tricked and embarrassed Binky on the stage in front of everyone but how later he does a more private prank so he would get a good innocent laugh all by himself, at the end of the book. (Another disclaimer on the book is that I taped a page together to skip Arthur's nightmare. Not pictures I want my daughter seeing, but you don't even notice anything in the story, it just skips to the next day.) I'd love to hear if you have any good books on April Fools Day that you read. 

After our book we did a simple bug stamping art project. I found these bugs at Hobby Lobby but here are some similar ones on Amazon if you're looking. The girls had to match the stamps in the right colors of paint we had. The ladybug was red, grasshopper green, bee was yellow...etc. They did really good. 

Lastly, our focus for the day was learning about how butterflies eat. We talked about how they find flowers and then when they land on the flower they unroll their really long tongue called a proboscis. Then they put their tongue way deep down in the middle of the flower and suck up the sweet nectar. 

I reinforced this by having my girls pretend to be butterflies and drink nectar from a flower. I had them color a card stock flower shape, making sure to be a nice yellow center, sweet with nectar to drink. Then I put a small hole in the middle. The girls and I love to make passion tea lemonade, so we made some to be our nectar. Then the girls put the straws in their mouths and had to poke it into the middle of the flower to sip some sweet nectar. This was really fun for my older one to actually keep the 'tongue' in her mouth and move it up and down for a drink. But my littlest one still enjoy sipping up the nectar from the straw. 

If you want to add a bit more fun for older ones and don't care about germs in a family you can try to set up a few flowers outside and have the butterflies fly around from flower to flower sipping the nectar. We have all been fighting a little nose congestion lately so I didn't want to pass germs around right now but this would have been so much fun. 

Well, I hope your kids enjoy learning about how butterflies eat. If you missed my last post on butterflies you can check out our other butterfly activities here. Also, keep a look out for some more buggy adventures coming up!

God Bless you and all your critters!

Heather Joy

Bug Week: Day 1, Butterflies!

This week since it's officially Spring we are having a little bit of fun and putting off some of our regular lesson plans to learn about bugs.  The joys of 'homeschooling' your little ones is just to get them in the habit of learning.  My eldest requests to do school every day and while I try to give her what she wants I know she is still young so we just do 'school' more as a fun learning time. No pressure, no rush, if she wants to be done we're done, lots of focus on nature and God's creation and crafts.

Every kid loves to learn about bugs.  Creepy things that make you both cringe with fear sometimes also brings a very good amount of curiosity.  And that's exactly what we're trying to harness in teaching at home: feeding ones curiosity with knowledge.  "You want to know why a bee likes flowers, let's find out." Exploring together God's creation is one of my greatest joys.

We recently found a Green Anoli lizard in our front yard and he has become our new pet.  It has also provided us a great opportunity to learn about lizards. What do they eat? Why is this lizard's nickname the American Chameleon? etc. Its' been a lot of fun learning with my girls and we find out more about our pet lizard Argh. Umm...yes, that's our lizards name: Argh! We couldn't decide on a name but everytime our youngest came up to the lizard she would growl that way so we just decided to name him Argh. (Although, in writing it is sounds more like a pirate than a growl, ha!)

So, back to bugs. Today we learned about butterflies. We read Angelina and the Butterfly, which is a cute story if your Angelina fans, which we are!  Angelina catches a hurt butterfly and through a series of events learns that butterflies need to be free to be happy.  It's a cute read.

We also made some Scratch Butterfly Ornaments that the girls absolutely loved! They are black paper ornaments in the shape of a butterfly and you simply use a wooden dowel to scratch off the black to reveal a wonderful design underneath.  We tried to focus on how butterflies are symmetrical and what they means. Although the girls just wanted to scratch their entire butterfly to see the pretty colors, so weren't too focused on that. I love these scratch ornaments and we do them each Spring (they come with like two dozen!).  I like them mostly because they are so easy for even my little one and all the kids love it.  Kara says, "It's like magic."

After our ornaments we make some Butterfly Bites for a snack.
All you need is:
-Celery
-Peanut Butter (or cheese spread)
-Pretzels
-Raisins

Put it together like ants on a log except add the pretzels as wings.  Super easy and lots of fun.

Lastly, I had saved a fun book about bugs for the end.  It's called One to Ten...and Back Again- An Amazing Pull-The-Ribbon Book. I got this book when I used to teach and we had a scholastic book fair.  It was so cool I just had to have it. I hadn't seen anything like it, nor have I since then.  It's a book about a single bee who finds a perfect flower to rest on, when with each page turn different bugs keep being added to his resting spot. Each page turn a ribbon pulls through and shows some bugs on it, then when you get to the end you flip the book upside down and watch as each page turn the ribbons disappear as you count back down to the single bee. The girls love reading this book and watching me slowly open the page so they can see the ribbon being pulled open. I can't believe it's available for so cheap now on Amazon. If you haven't seen it check it out here. It's totally a keeper for the home library!

Well, thanks for following our first day of bug adventures and I hope you will look back to see what other bugs we'll explore!

God Bless and Happy Bug Exploring!

Heather Joy

Homeschool Day

In this post I will be sharing with you some tips and Do's and Don't when planning your homeschool day.  This is geared towards ages 3-5 but you could just vamp it up a notch and have it be for your older children as well.

I don't claim to be an expert on anything, all I can do is share what works for our house, but I will share a little bit of my background if it might help: I was an assistant and afternoon kindergarten teacher for over 10 years before becoming a stay at home mom, so it's never been a debate that I won't teach my own kids.  It's just in my blood: I have to! I love to teach, especially Kindergarten age when the kids are learning to read.

Even though my girls are 4 years and almost 2 years. I have already started to do a little homeschooling for my oldest. Even though people complain that I may be starting too young, you really have to take it one child at a time. Kara knew her letter sounds when she was just over 2 years.--not forced I might add! And now she goes around the house sounding out the first sound in any word she can think of-- she is ready and eager to learn to read.  So, I'm taking advantage of her readiness a bit early.  But my focus as every mom should have when starting to homeschool, is to make learning fun and simply setting aside some time in our day to focus on learning.



Before we get into the actual logistics here are a couple things to remember when planning your homeschool day:

DONT'S:

-Don't Just Use Workbooks: Little ones are still developing their eyes, so lots of detailed small work is not good.  Put a limit on it.  We do 2 pages a day, sometimes just 1 if I have a lot of other stuff planned. Just doing workbooks is not going to be fun enough to keep your kids wanting to do it for more than a week. 
-Don't Confine Them To A Chair:  Kids have low attention spans!  Just grasp that and let it soak in.  In order to keep them having fun make sure they can move around a lot.  We start at our desk, then move to our reading chairs for a book and/or Bible time, then she picks one activity out of her bucket at a time.  This means she may go back 3 or 4 times to her bucket.  So she's never sitting down for more than 10 minutes or so.
-Don't Teach For Hours:  If your kids are young like mine even just a half hour of one on one teaching is enough and then you can add some fun educational games, file folder activities, math manipulatives and etc. to help keep things fresh.  Don't create burnout in your 4 year old.  There is no need for hardcore tutoring right now.  Just make learning fun and limit your amount of time.
-Don't Force Reading:  If your child is not ready and/or interested in reading then continue to focus on other things while you wait.  It will come!  There really is a 'lightbulb' in a child's eyes in Kindergarten when they all of a sudden get it.  I've seen it so many times. Pushing and forcing it on them will just be a waste of energy and frustration on yours and the child's part.  

DO'S:

-Do Mix Things Up:  Variety really is the spice of life here! What makes our drawer system fun is that everyday is something new.  Yes, she will find some repeat items in their but I always try to keep adding things she wouldn't expect. 
-Do Add a Lot of Games and Centers: The way I do this is by using my play rotation cards. It will be explained in greater detail below, but games are a great way for kids to learn.  Games incorporate numbers, counting, fine motor skills of moving pieces and rolling dice, etc.
-Have Time Set Aside: If you haven't already seen my post on mommy sanity, you should check it out.  Most moms struggle with feelings of guilt, and being overwhelmed, inadequate.  We secretly are jealous of how other mom's seem to have it all together and wonder what we're doing wrong and why can never seem to accomplish anything.  If you are feeling that way, please check out my post and see what has truly been a life saver for my sanity.
-Do Make it LOTS of Fun: If something is not working, then try something new.  No one says you have to do things a certain way.  If this system starts to not work for us then I'll adapt something new.  The important thing is to keep learning fun!
-Do Expect To Help A Lot:
-Do Set Up Your Room To Succeed:

Our School Time:

Now, here is our simple Homeschool approach in a nutshell:

Now I will try to elaborate a bit more on each step of our day.

1. Workbook:

We start with 1-2 pages of her workbook.  We limit this time for her eye development and boredom factor.  We found a couple really good preschool workbooks from Costco that we switch between. I love these ones because they have lots of cutting skills, sticker pages and coloring, not a lot of small detail oriented stuff.  Kara leaves her pencil in the last page we completed so she already knows where to open it up and we work on a page or two together.  I let her pick which workbook for the day.  She loves feeling in control of her choice.  I don't plan the themes into my lesson planner but I do write down what we did on each day onto the planner.  Then she puts it away in her desk drawer.

One thing to mention:  Kara has her own desk, next to mine, which she sits at.  With her being so young, I help her in almost everything so I need to be close. So plan your homeschool room accordingly.  They need you to be close.

2. Drawer Work:

Here's a picture of our drawers:

I also got this at Costco once upon a time (can you tell we're Costco freaks yet?). Anyways, each drawer is labeled for the day and she pulls it out to see what's inside.  I find the element of surprise the best thing ever!  She loves opening it up to see what's next for the day. 

She usually will have multiple items in her drawer so we always work from the top to bottom.  It's fun for her because she can see what's gonna be next once she finishes her current work.  It's a great motivator.  Also, she is ultimately working towards the 'play rotation' card at the bottom, which I will explain next.

What do I put inside my drawer?:
I usually put a lot of randomness to be honest.  I make sure to mix some fun centers with other more learning tasks.  Here's some of the things I try to sneak in every day or at least once a week:
-Bible lesson (everyday- I will usually switch up a theme for the week by doing different things each day like: reading a book, sequencing cards, memory verse, bible craft, bible story box, flannel story, etc)
-Letter work (everyday- something related to our letter of the week)
-File Folder game
-Math Center
-Pocket Chart
-Flashcards (we make them into a sorting game, or quiz)
-Puzzle
-Craft (we have a bible craft every week and then other crafts whenever)
-Science (I plan to do experiments when she's older, but right now we just learn about animals mostly)
-Books (everyday- I usually have it start with the letter of the week to help reiterate that)
-Whatever else you can think of!
-Last, but the most important thing I place at the bottom of every drawer is our PLAY ROTATION (see below)

Honestly, variety is the spice of life here. She loves finding things in her drawer she never had before and I love making sure to use up the resources I have or find online and I really don't make sure everything matches. If I want her to learn about cats even though we're on the letter D I don't care. I just know that she's getting knowledge in her and she's having fun along the way.  The biggest thing I had to teach myself in starting this was to unlearn some of my formal teaching. I was taught very young how to create a lesson plan and how to have it be all theme or letter related and have everything correlate. Now, I go with the flow and I find it to be more fun and a lot less stress for me when it comes time to plan. Plus, how easy is it to just find some random fun stuff and projects around the house and throw them in each drawer- planning done.

Of course, you could make it a more thorough curriculum if you wanted.  Which I'm sure as my girls get older I will make sure we cover more stuff on a regular basis.  I could plan a focus for each day: phonics, writing, reading, science, etc. Or I could add a small amount of each of those to each drawer making sure that it progresses each day. However, keeping in mind that my girls are still so young my job is just to train a habit for learning and making it be fun to do so! So for me, the easier the better.

3. Play Rotation:

What are Play Rotation Cards?:
Play rotation cards are the gem of our lesson time.  Below I put a few pictures for you to get a visual but let me first explain what they are and why they work.  Who doesn't love a reward? Aren't we all in some way working towards a goal or reward in everything we do? You work out to look good or feel better. You work to get money. You go to school to eventually get a good job and be an educated member of society.  Well, our little ones love to work for a goal too and while they can't quite comprehend the fact that increasing their knowledge now will help them be better people of society, they can focus on a daily goal: of reaching their PLAY ROTATION.

Play rotation cards are the secret envelope system I designed for a reward for all my daughters hard work in school.  She pulls out a drawer and sees all the fun school stuff and then peeks down and sees her play rotation envelope at the bottom. That is what she's working towards.  When she finishes her tasks above, then she gets to open her secret card.

Inside she will find a laminated center card.  It could be anything from books, to computer time, to puzzles, to her animal hospital game, mr. potato head, swim time or anything else.  (I will try to list the cards for you later to get some ideas) She always gets excited for the secret card inside. Remember the element of surprise is your friend here.  Even though it may not be her favorite center she still gets a little excited and we make it a big deal: "Awesome, you get to do ...... today!".

Here's a look at some of the laminated cards the I put inside:

Keys to make it work for you:

-Make sure it's centers he/she likes.  Sometimes I will put a center I think is fun only to find out Kara doesn't really like it. If I put too many centers in a row that she didn't like, the fun of play rotation would quickly wear off.  Remember: this is a reward for all their hard labors of not complaining through schooling!
-Set a timer.  The remainder of our set aside time is for play rotation. So, if we only have 20 minutes before lunch then she only gets 20 minutes to play.  Also,  on those days that I put a task that's not her favorite and I can see her attitude shifting I always set the timer for a little bit less.  Maybe only 10 minutes before she can have some free time before lunch. If she's not having fun you're not reaching your goal of a reward!
-Have a good variety.  Try to make a lot of center cards so that you can switch them out and keep your children on their toes just a bit.  I started with just a few and now my collection of cards has grown to quite a lot.  Sometimes we get in a routine of having free art on Tuesdays and Movie on Fridays, and then after a while of doing that I switch those out for something else.  The only reason I have those repeat though is because she LOVES art and we usually watch a movie that goes with our Bible lesson for the week.
-Make it a solo task.  In our schedule I have this play rotation time designated as planning time for me. So, with that Kara knows that this is mommy's time to work while she gets her play rotation to do by herself.  If she can't do it by herself yet than I might include it inside her drawer and train her in it before having it become an official card in her rotation. 
-Try to keep the rotations unique.  I try to keep a lot of my teaching toys, manipulatives, puzzles and games that I pick for my play rotations out of reach from normal play use.  This makes these activities more fun and exciting.  It also guarantees that Kara usually won't complain about it.  If I just included the same old toys that they had day in and day out it wouldn't be as effective.  Although there are some I still include, such as our doll house or our train set, etc. these I include because sometimes they just get forgotten. 


Well, that wraps up our homeschooling day.  It's simple and sweet and can be as easy to plan or as time involved as you want to spend on it.  Some days I know we're busy I can go into the box and just take a few of the tasks out to cut down on time.  I love the freedom it allows me and I hope you will too!

Remember you are not cramming your kids with knowledge. You're building and training them up in a love of learning.  So, don't be rushed through everything.  If they get interested in something plan to learn about it with them.  If you get them to love learning, schooling will never be a struggle for each of you.

Happy Schooling and God Bless!

Heather Joy