How I Organize Our Schooling | Pt 1

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love organization and planning and all things having to do with charts.  It was only natural that 2 years ago when we decided to switch to Sonlight that I figure out how to organize things and arrange our schedule.  I loved the way Sonlight organized the instructors guide (IG) but I also knew I wanted only 1 place to look at everything we had for the week and I didn't want everything messy and handwritten on the IG.  I also knew that I wanted to move towards teaching the girls to be more independent so I had that in mind with everything I did.

We've had 2 years using this method and now with 2 weeks under our belt this year things are running as seamlessly as ever and it's been a smooth transition which to me means it's working great.

I love having the summer off and being able to enjoy myself without school planning hanging over me.  For this reason I tend to research and then purchase my curriculum in the last month of our school year.  I then spend the last few weeks of school creating all my lesson plans for the coming year.  I love being done at the start and not having to do anything except print our lesson plans and organize our folders the week before school starts.

STEP 1:  Schedule School Weeks
The first thing I do is plan my start date and decide on which weeks we'll take off.  The dates in the right column on the chart below shows each date I plan to do school. I schedule everything into a 36 week year which comes out to 4 quarters of 9 weeks each.

STEP 2: Create Master Lesson Plans by Subject
Once I've filled in all my weeks I create all my lesson plans for each subject.  I take a subject and look at how many lessons it has and then break those down into each week taking holiday's and breaks into consideration.  Depending on the curriculum I have a few flex weeks at the end I'll either schedule in as needed or leave at the end.  If we end up needing more time on anything it's easy enough to move things around otherwise we can finish a subject early which is always a treat.

This is what my master looks like.  I have a tab for each subject on the same excel spreadsheet.

STEP 3:  Create Weekly Lesson Plans

After I have my game plan in place for each subject on my master I get my weekly lesson plans input.  I have a separate excel chart that gets printed with my week's lesson plans.  I have each subject along the left with the days across the top and each of the lessons I plan to complete filled in.  As you can see, we have a 4 day schedule.  I try to only schedule math and spelling tests on Friday.

I tend to only fill in a quarter's worth of lesson plans at a time.  This allows me to change things around on my master if we need more time on something without having to also change my weekly plans.  When I have about 2 weeks left of my quarter I'll go ahead and get the next quarter filled in.

STEP 4: Use Weekly Lesson Plans

As I complete each lesson I highlight it.  I use pretty colors... because I can! ;-)  If I don't get to something I leave it blank so I remember to go back to it later.  If I do something on a different day I'll highlight it in the day's color so I know when it got done.