Preparing For the School Year

Nancy asks how we prepare our lesson plans for the school year. For History and Science I layout a monthly plan. Within each month it is very loose. I list some topics to cover, books to read and ideas I have for activities or field trips. DH also looks over the schedule and adds to it. A couple weeks before the start of the month I start placing holds on books, CDs, DVDs, games, from the library. When the month is over we leave it at that unless someone has a question about something and we need to get it answered before moving on to the next topic. Math is easy because we do a lesson almost everyday until the book is done and depending on when we finish we might get the next level and keep working or just be done for the year. Religion is covered weekly using the Church of Saint Paul family formation program, as well as daily life conversations. Reading is part of everyday with books chosen based on the liturgical year, history and science. This year I also ordered CHC spellers and map skills workbooks which again we will divide the number of pages or lessons by the weeks of our school year and complete them by the end of the year. Of course life happens and we learn from those lessons as well.