Planning thoughts

I don't have any legal requirements to keep records so I have a lot of freedom in how I plan. Over the years I have tried various methods of planning out my kids learning time. I've kept overviews, we've used tick-lists, I've created and recreated schedules of our year in detail and in summary, as weekly overviews and daily to do lists. Mostly we seem to get more stress from my planning than benefits.

Recently I have been using very little planning. We are simply doing the next thing and in many ways this is far more productive and less stressful.

But juggling maths, Latin, Greek, writing, dictation, copy work, music, drill sheets, and the weekly round of history, bible, literature, science, art, nature study, composer and artist studies across three children and my head starts to spin.

I realize that any structure I choose needs to be flexible that we can stop and master the work without putting pressure on ourselves that we are getting behind. But, since my children will avoid what they are struggling with I want to be able to see where they are slowing down, or what is being missed so that we don't loose the plot.

My latest review of my planning forms has come down to

• An overview of our term goals - where I would like us to get to at the end of each 10 week block.
  
  
• A form that allows me to record what each child actually does each day - with room to pencil in my plans for the week in advance for subjects that I want to be organized for.
  
  
• I may add in amore detailed form that lets me mark how we are going with our goals in case its a simple matter of prioritising a slubject to reach the goals. I haven't decided yet if this is healthy or not.
  

So now in the quiet between re-decorating jobs I'm going to finalize my plans and try and catch up on some marking.



The first of my Iris' are flowering - I haven't had time to take a photo but this is one from last year, they make a beautiful border to the main rose garden.