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Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Homeschooling - the Ugly Admin side of it.

A friend from FB asked me some questions that a lot of other have asked me in the past regarding the administrative side of homeschooling. Something I both like and dread. I've been doing this for 3 years and it's only now that I feel I have gotten the hang of it and it doesn't stress me out that much.

Before I go into it, I need to explain that although I am primarily a homeschooling mom, I have a lot of other engagements that take me away from my home.  This means that when I conduct trainings for others, or I do my coaching/counseling and consultancy work, I cannot homeschool. I have had to make provisions for these things.

MASTERPLAN:

At the start of the school year I go through each and every book of Andrea. I divide each book into 4 parts so that I know how much I need to complete per year. I normally front load the schedule because I take into consideration the Christmas period and that my months tend to get hectic when it's the end of the school year as well. Here's a sample of a general Master plan:


  • Math  
    • Chapter 1 - Addition
    • Chapter 2 - Subtraction
    • Chapter 3 - Multiplication by 2 and 3
    • Chapter 4 - Division by 2 and 3
  • Science
    • Unit 1 - Senses
    • Unit 2 - Senses Working Together
    • Unit 3 - Growing and Developing
  • Language
    • Chapter 1 - Sentences and Personal Narratives
    • Chapter 2 - Nouns and Friendly Letters



Monthly Plan/Weekly Plan:

I then break down the Master Plan into 10 weeks. I have 10 weeks because 8 weeks are for the lessons, 1 extra week for any catch-up or overflow and the 10th week for the exams.

When I break things down here I go into detail. In my excel file I specify the dates, when I would have quizzes. And my ideas for projects that could possibly integrate the different subject matters. My project ideas are very malleable though because our projects are ultimately Andrea's ideas.

My excel file looks like this:
1. Columns are labelled as Week 1 - Week 10
2. Rows are subjects.
3. I input the specific topics per cell. I also include ideas like movies, trips, books to help me.


Daily Schedule:

We don't have a daily schedule. Sometimes we homeschool for 4 hours a day. Sometimes 8 hours a day. Sometimes 0 hours a day. It's easy to adjust as long as we don't stray too far from my weekly plan.


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