Saturday, July 8, 2017

July 08, 2017 Planning

After all these years of homeschooling (17?) and with only one child left, I'm making the most serious attempt I've ever made to plan and organize before the school year starts.

What am I using?  Plan Your Year:  Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace by Pam Barnhill
The Plan Your Year Guide breaks down the planning process into 10 doable steps.   After  reading a step/chapter and then watching the accompanying video, I worked on that particular step myself.  When I felt I had completed that step as well as I could, I moved on.  There are a few steps I will continue working on (tweaking), but I felt it was important to move forward rather than getting stuck on perfection.  For example, one of the later steps is to organize your homeschool space.  After all my years of homeschooling with no dedicated homeschool room, I have an abundance of materials stashed all over my house.  I continued to the next step in the guide and made a note to myself to work every day on different areas of my house where homeschool supplies are stored.

For me personally, the most important step was writing a vision for my student.   What an eye opening experience.  I realized that quite a bit of what we have focused on in our homeschool journey has not always matched the vision for this kiddo.  As I kept going through the guide, looking back at the vision helped reign me in and helped me to refocus on what we need to do for her future self.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the journey has been to work with other homeschool parents traveling along the same path.  There is a Facebook page dedicated to users of Plan Your Year.  It has kept me motivated as I've received help and been able to see how other folks work through the same steps in the process.

Because of Plan Your Year, I see a much more productive school year ahead of us.

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