How To Be a Planning Minimalist

[Edited to correct numerous and unintentionally funny typos! I wrote this very quickly at 7 in the morning before dashing out to Mass.  I am becoming the typo queen.  Every year I get worse.  I need my own editor or pretty soon I won't be able to communicate at all!]

Over on Catholic Relaxed Homeschoolers, people are starting to ask about planners.  How do you plan?  What is your favorite planner?  That sort of thing.  I've also seen blog posts floating around about how to organize your homeschool with lovely photos of a perfect control center with every conceivable item one would supposedly desire to keep your homeschooling ship running like the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars!  (Can you tell what we've been studying lately?).

Well, I am here to tell you, your kids can learn tons and tons and you don't need any of that perfectionist vibe going on.  You really don't.  And in fact all that desire to have the perfect system is just 1) a way to beat yourself when you fall short. every. single. day  2) a way to sucker you into parting from your money.

Just as you don't really need all that curriculum that beckons to you with its illusionary siren song of happy children who will sit and do lessons for 4 hours at a pop with nary a whine or complaint, it is pretty delusional, if you ask me, you don't need elaborate plans or planners!  I know no one did ask me, but anyway. . . .

How to plan:

1)  Make a list of any outside obligations you are going to have for the year and the days of the week on which they will fall and the time they occur.  Do you have weekly physical therapy for one of the kids?  Do you have weekly piano lessons?  Do you go to the library every Thursday?  Do you go to daily mass every day?  Or once a week?  Are you part of a co-op that meets three times a month?  Are your teens in a homeschool science class?  Scout meetings?  Now plug all this into whatever calendar method you use, so you know what is going on each month, google Calendar, a wall calendar with pretty pictures of gardens (that's my favorite), one of those white board calendar things from an office supply store you can stick on the fridge, whatever system works best for you.

2)  Once you plug all this into a sample month, you can see where there are blocks of time for things that happen but aren't regular - like doctors appointments or other meetings.  You can see where you can plug in seasonal obligations, like if a kid is playing on a sports team and needs to show up for practice and games.  Section off those times in your mind, so you have some idea of when you are generally free to commit to other obligations as they come up.

3)  Try to have at least one day where you don't have outside commitments.  This day can be a rest day where you can stay in your pjs all day or it can be a day for field trips, a heavy errand day, a day devoted to blitz cleaning your house, etc.  Having one day free of outside obligations gives you flexibility and reduces stress.

4)  Don't overbook yourself.  For instance, If your kids are really into sports and that eats up lots of your time, you might not be able to participate in lots of other stuff.  Learn to say no.  You want a nice balance that suits your family's personality between being out and about and being at home.  I know so many exhausted moms who run themselves ragged because they are terrified of denying their children any opportunity.  Maybe it is where I live, but it is so competitive and leads to such a rushed, stress-filled life.  So show some self-discipline and say no if something is going to just be too much for your schedule.

5)  Plan the rhythm of your day.  Your day may not look like anybody else's day because your particular family situation requires different things.  Homeschooling is, by its very nature, customizable.  So many things figure into this.  Does mom work?  Are the parents on shift work?  Is mom not a morning person?  How many kids and what is the age range?  Are some kids attending school while some are at home?  So don't look to how others do it at first.  Just look at your own family's needs and routines and see what would work best for your particular situation.  If you have formal academic time at all, it might wind up being at night or in the afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. That's fine, if that works best for you.

6)  Since I am a curriculum minimalist (a recovering junkie) I just like to have general pockets of time set aside for particular purposes.  For instance, prayer time, read aloud time, screen time, housekeeping time, free time, one on one time, homework time (for teens with outside classes), quiet time.

7)  Instead of having set curriculum for everything, you can just plan to have a general theme going.  This can be inspired by a child's interest or something that has occurred to you is important to focus on.  For instance, you might want to focus on virtue via literature and history (studying admirable people from the past).  Or you might decide you want to focus on American history or Ancient cultures.  Maybe the big focus this year will be on the history of science.  Whatever it is, you can gather resources and list them somewhere (I usually do this in Word).  These resources can be websites, books to read aloud, books to strew for the child's reading pleasure, ideas for projects, games, worksheets, videos, etc.  I usually have a loose idea of what I want to read aloud over the course of a term or semester or year.

8)  Gather resources into one place so they are easily accessible.  For me, since the crux of my homeschooling was* always read alouds and copy work, I'd gather the read alouds I'd planned, plus any penmanship books or sources for copy work in an easily accessible place.  (*I say 'was' here because now I only have high schoolers, which looks very different from when I had lots of littles).

9)  Do the next thing.  This way of doing things worked much better than writing my plans down.  Inevitably I would start off gangbusters writing down everything I wanted the kids to do but this soon petered out.  For me, just doing the next thing worked the best and then dating the page so we'd know what we did when.  So if my kid was working through a penmanship book, we'd just do the next page each time we sat down to work on it.  If I was teaching some phonics to a beginning reader, I'd just write the date we'd worked on something at the top of the page.  If my 7th grader was working through Saxon 8/7, he'd just do the next lesson.  There was no need to write stuff down.  The trick is to keep all the books together for each student in a cubby or shelf or crate, so that you can easily go and look and see what's been going on.

10)  Journal what goes on each day.  This will help you feel on top of things and also reinforce the fact that even though you are relaxed, your kids are learning.

Example journal entry:

4 and 6 yo played with Montessori tray (match item to beginning sound on card), put together Moses floor puzzle, 6 yo worked in Kumon maze book, 4 yo played on Starfall, watched Magic School Bus, listened to Jim Weiss cd for quiet time. read picture books, played with play-doh.  played downstairs on scooters, put on puppet show.  9 yo played with Legos and read Bionicle book, showed him how to do long division and put up problem on white board, going through a Jazz Jackrabbit phase.  12 and 13 yo did lesson in math, read aloud - Count of Monte Cristo, 13 yo practiced dance, 12 yo read Bud, Not Buddy, helped with laundry, good conversation with dad about video game companies and how they work.  13 yo reading Tree Grows in Brooklyn, worked on essay for Little Flowers.  All:  copy work (Latin), saint of the day, geography read aloud unit plus colored in map.