Homeschool tips – Page 3 – Chicagoland Homeschool Network

Works For Me Wednesday: Paper clips and post-it notes

A blog that I have gained quite a bit of useful information from pertaining to homeschooling, home organization, and other responsibilities of motherhood is We Are THAT Family. Each Wednesday she hosts a gathering of ideas that “work.”

The theme for this week’s Works for Me Wednesday is organization, probably an area in which even the most organized among us can benefit from some fresh ideas.

Another great pool of information is at Five J’s Thirsty Thursday posting. You can find a handful of great tips and inspiration to help in the enriching of our kids’ minds. Today Joy starts out with some great ideas about how to handle a student who is feeling overwhelmed.

Two items my homeschool organization depends on regularly are paperclips and post-it notes. These simple objects have saved my sanity more than once.

Here are just a sampling of places you will find them in my homeschool room:

– Marking pages in the text book. Rather than have to flip back and forth to find the current lesson, we mark it with a paper clip and we quickly jump to the right page. And, they stay put a lot better than most book marks.

– Marking individual lessons in one multi-use book. When I have many kids at different places in one book (like Spelling Power), I use color coded paperclips to mark each child’s lesson. They each have their own color for these types of things (folders, paperclips, binders, etc.) Blake is red, Paige is pink, etc. We all just know these things since they have been in place for so long now.

– Highlighting questions or topics that we don’t want to skip over. A strategically placed post-it note jogs my memory when we read through a lesson or book together.

– Post it notes divide up their binders like file tabs. They are so much easier to move around, relabel and personalize than other purchased notebook tabs

Do you have any other simple organizational tools that you depend on in your homeschool? Please share!

Individual schedules

We jumped back into school full time this week, fairly successfully, I have to say.

I admit, I am a creature of habit, but for some reason I let my routines slide in the summer. There is something terribly refreshing to me about starting a newly revised and enforced schedule. My house gets instantly cleaner, my days become more productive, emails get answered. It seems to work magic, for me, anyway.

Our first day had its typical speed bumps. Phone calls that couldn’t wait, eggs that needed turning, squabbles needing peace, and preparations I forgot. Somehow, I had remembered to type up our daily schedule, but forgotten to print out the kids’ individual schedules.

Last year I decided to make the kids their own schedules to keep in their folder or by their seat that reminded them of what they should be doing throughout the day. While I have it all on the master schedule, it is helpful to have it boiled down in one easy slip to keep handy.

It looks something like this (each child’s is of course a little different):

All morning chores done by 9:00 (Bible time)

9:30 Missionary bio

9:45 Spelling and prep for day

10:00 Piano

10:15 Handwriting

10:30 Math with Mom

10:45 Math on own

11:00 Typing

11:15 Silent reading

11:30 English with Mom

11:45 English on own

12:00 PE / Clean school room

12:30 Eat lunch

1:00 clean up lunch chores

1:15 Study hall

2:15 AO Year 5 – with Mom and Paige

3:15 Notebooking page

3:45 Independent time

4:45 Cook with Mom on Monday

And, on Friday we stay together the whole day covering extra topics that we want to spend time on (foreign language, nature study, etc.)
So, today we had these in place since I finished them up last night, and today went even more smoothly. Something about everyone knowing which direction they should be going and having clear expectations on how to get there.

These individual schedules have definitely worked for us.

I know scheduling is one of the big questions of new (and veteran) homeschool moms.

Anyone else want to share what tips they use to make sure everything gets accomplished as needed?

Do you prefer schedules, routines, or more flexibility?

How often do you change your daily plan?

Homeschool Showcase

Another great edition of Homeschool Showcase is up over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. As we gear up for another school year, check out some of the great posts for ideas to get your school year off with a bang.

One post that I noted includes 100 links to sites where you can buy, sell, trade, and even write books. So, if you are looking to expand (or clear out) your book inventory, you’ll want to check that out.

There’s lots more to enjoy so be sure to meander through the links.

The 2009 Schoolhouse Planner

Summer tends to be planning season in homeschooling households, and just in time for the formulating frenzy, The Old Schoolhouse has released its brand new 2009 Schoolhouse Planner.

This planner offers far more than stability and structure for your homeschool days. As we all know, the role of mother, home manager, teacher, negotiator, etc. overlap throughout each day. And, likewise, the parameters of the 2009 Schoolhouse Planner stretch into these roles as well.

A sampling of what you will enjoy with this tool:

Calendars — including ideas appropriate for each month from July (starting in just a couple weeks!) through June 2010; yearly calendars up to 2012; along with recipes and resources appropriate for each month

Inspiration — from well known homeschool authors (including Jay Wile and Amanda Bennett), addressing topics pertinent to homeschool families.

Must-know lists and compiled charts — from presidents to cloud types to geographical terms, the periodical table as well as miracles and parables.

Record Keeping — fill in schedules (for two, three, four, and five children), grade tracking, field trip planning, activity managers, inventory sheets, goals, etc. This book offers 120 pages of homeschool related forms and schedules!

Household help — they don’t send a person, but all of these resources can help everything run more smoothly. This also gives you a place and format to compile essential information. They help you organize chores, medical information, schedules, menus, gardening, pets, parties, and budgets. Over 60 pages of these useful tools.

Each of the forms is made to either print and write on, or type right onto and print out filled in, whatever you prefer. You can save your changes for further modification, or to build on, or print and save the hard copy.

The only downside I have found is that if you want to keep more than one computer based copy of one of the forms, you would need to save the whole planner more than once on your computer. Since I plan on storing hard copies of the record sheets, this did not diminish its usefulness for me, but it was something I had to consider when printing out the various copies for each of my kids. However, if you own a copy of Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader, the free download, but a rather expensive software), it has the capability of saving individual pages in modified format.

I have big plans for organizing this summer and pulling together all the information and strategies that I need for the year ahead. This wonderful planner has given me the framework and tools to make it all a reality. I had already started before receiving the planner, but the 2009 Schoolhouse Planner has done a lot of the work for me, and now I don’t need to go searching all over the internet to get it done, making my precious planning time even more efficient.

And, since it is all in an ebook format you can print and reprint the various pages as you need to keep them visible around your home and keep your family all on the same page.

All of these resources, 375 overflowing pages, are packed into this one e-book for $39.00. You would want to purchase it soon to take full advantage of the planning and ideas available even to enrich your celebration and study of the Fourth of July, and to have all the information in place for the new school year.

Purchase the 2009 Schoolhouse Planner.

WFMW: Keeping students motivated

Earlier this school year I instituted a new reward system in our homeschool that I thought might encourage others as well. As a result we have enjoyed some smooth, productive weeks academically speaking. We have still enjoyed our share of bumps in the road and attitudes here and then, but I just need to rave a bit about our new found secret for these smooth, easy days.

Bribery definitely works.

According to this “experiment,” we often offer a weekly reward for all students completing their school work by a certain time on Friday, and then we can finish our school week with something fun. I have even increased the number of subjects that we cover on a more regular basis because their motivation keeps them trucking along so they can finish the school week a little early.

One afternoon we headed to the local Best Buy. My son requested this to play the video games there. The girls were not quite on board with that idea, but ended up making the most of it. Then we swung by McDonald’s for sundaes for a double reward.

Sweet success!

This addition to our homeschool plan has helped to keep our gears in forward motion each day and create a more positive atmosphere. We constantly encourage each other to get a little more done, and use our time a little more efficiently to continually work closer to the goal. Some days still accomplish more than others, but overall we have gotten far more done each week than we did a while back, with much better attitudes to boot!

We have only scratched the surface of reward ideas . . . ice cream, popcorn balls, snow cones, picnics, donuts, the dollar store, video game time, play dates. Half the fun is choosing the reward at the beginning of the week.

They continue to plot for the weeks ahead, and this has definitely worked for us, and kept boredom at bay any season of the year.