For the Generation To Come

To manage our ever growing home library, I use the program Book Collector. All you do is type in the ISBN number and it will look online to grab all the info about the book including a picture of the cover. And I even found this cheap cuecat scanner on ebay and then you don’t even have to type the isbn–just scan. Very easy!

I also bought this stamp from Expressionery to mark all our books:

Thought I’d follow-up on the summer organization going on at my house!

Here is a pic of my new bookshelf from IKEA that I am filling up with all our school stuff.

I have been updating my family organizer book…you can read how to assemble your own at Organized Home. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, death has a way of making you get your things in order. Not that we have experienced this up close, but a friend from church is gone. It makes you want to make sure things are done in case you aren’t here tomorrow. At least the little things…like how and where to pay the phone bill online and a million other little things we moms do…won’t become big things. Maybe that is silly, but maybe not?

I also ordered Amy Knapp’s Family Organizer. I’ve seen these around Wal-Mart, Target and Office Depot but haven’t seen the new ones for July ‘07 thru December ‘08. And since I ordered online I was able to get the Christian one and it has the sturdy clear cover (available only online) which is way better than the one at Wally World. She also has a homeschool version. (I hope I don’t regret that I didn’t get that one instead)

I try to get as much planning done in the summer for the coming year as I can. I’ve been wanting to write out how I do this, but haven’t been able to. I did find this website that has some wonderful suggestions…especially for new homeschoolers!

Here are a few forms that I use for planning with a short description:
1. Yearly Planning Sheet: I use this to roughly sketch out each course for the entire year. On the left side is a box for each week where I jot down the chapter or topic. On the right side I list books and resources I plan to use along with other notes.

2. Quarterly Planning Sheet: After planning out the year, then I work on the daily assignments quarter by quarter. I do NOT enter dates on this form. (This form I got from the donnayoung.org site, but I made my own version with lines to write on.) Things always come up, sickness, etc…so I don’t like to write dates on this.

I actually photocopy these forms at 70% and keep them in a half-size binder. I had an old Daytimer that works great for this! This is where all my homeschool stuff stays.

After doing this for all my courses…I consider the year DONE!

From here I have done two different things.
The first year I used a blank Assignment Sheet and printed off at least 36 copies (a couple of extra for mess ups and half weeks) and spiral bound them at the local office store to make my own student planner. (I did add dates to this planner. ) At the beginning of each school week, usually MOnday, I would sit down with my child and give them assignments from teh quarterly planner I kept in my notebook and they filled out their planner. With different dates off, etc, the quarterly planner can get confusing for your child. Oftentimes we would be on different weeks for different subjects, so I kept up with where they were in each subject. Sometimes you will realize after you get into the middle of a book that you need to slow down or speed up.
The second year I used this system I bought a homeschool lesson planning software (I bought “Homeschool Easy Records” but there are others). From the quarterly planner sheets I entered all my daily assignments. The program allows you to set up your school calendar, including adjusting for sick days, and will date the assignments for you. This way you just print off the weekly assignment sheet from the software.

Which way did I like better? The first..although this is the more time consuming method. For my older two, there was just something about them writing out all their assignments. They knew what they needed to accomplish for the week and things seemed to get done better. For my younger one, I would write out the assignments for him which helped me stay on top of his stuff. When it was all on the computer we often would only read one day at a time which prevented us from preparing for some things like we needed.

Hope this helps you get organized this summer!

I keep going back and forth over this…a weakness of mine
First I started the year with more of a routine. I had a list of things to be done and we worked through them in that order. We did not look at the clock for a start and end time. But soon after school started, I pulled out my MOTH book and we set up times for everything. That never lasts long. It doesn’t take long for us to get off schedule and when we do, I tend to just ditch the whole rest of the day. As you can imagine, we get very little accomplished this way.

After reading Lisa’s post on routine, I’ve decided to go back to that route. I went back to the Heart of Wisdom book and looked at her schedule as well. And here is our new ‘routine’ for 2007:

8:30 We meet at the table to begin: (personal devotions and breakfast done prior)
God’s Word: Catechism, character quality, bible reading (along with reading instruction), and bible studies using SOW

10:30 Snack and then on to studing God’s World: Math and Science

12:00 Lunch, chores, break

1:30 study God’s Plan: History and geography
then on to study God’s Kingdom: different life skills, etc

I am going to move literature reading and AWANA studying to later on their own time. They can work on these in the afternoon or in the evening. Hopefully, this will simplify things and we will get more accomplished. The only fault I see so far is not having enough time for Science studies because math can take awhile on some days. I’ve thought about alternating History and Science studies so that History is Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Science is Tuesday, Thursday. (or something like that) Time will tell!

Trying to keep up with housework, paying bills, cooking, etc. is the hard part of homeschooling for me. Forget that I was never good at these things even when I wasn’t homeschooling…so now it’s much worse.

I’m trying to add little things, one at a time, until I get it all mastered! (if God allows that many days on the earth, I’m not sure?!? 120 years it says in Genesis…not sure I’ll make it ) Maybe mastered is too strong a word…until it becomes more of a habit.

So here are a couple of things that have helped me:
First thing is having the kids help. This year I changed my list of chores in for just “Room for the Week.” I have one child that has kitchen, one for the front bathroom, and one for the living room. These are the most lived in areas! There job is to help keep it cleaned and picked up all week. They also have to keep up their rooms and help with their own laundry (not wash, but take dirty clothes to laundry room and fold and put up). This is much easier for me to remember who has what and not have to always refer to a list.

I’ve tried the flylady a couple of times. I still am not a full-fledged flylady…but she has some great advice on keeping organized. Best advice from her that I got…give up perfection! If you wait until you have time to mop the floor and do it perfectly…then it never gets done. So why not do a little here and a little there…at least it’s semi-clean most all the time. Hope that makes some sense–probably should read and check it out yourself. She even has some tips gathered for homeschool moms here.

Planning meals has helped as well. I’ve never been good at planning and cooking so I’m trying to do a better job about it and it has been nice to have so many meals at home. Getting everyone to eat home-cooked food is another challenge we have yet to master! Menus4Moms has been a help in trying new things, the recipes seem to be regular food that at least a few in my family will eat. Check the website and sign up for their weekly menu–it’s free! Another thing that is nice is when I just double my recipes and put half in the freezer to eat in a few weeks. I haven’t done a lot of that, but when I do it is so nice to have that in the freezer on busy days. And I found this nice article from the same website that I thought was great.

The dreaded “S” word…to me and the kids, anyway! God has been showing me that I need to be more disciplined in my life. (Kind of like when you pray for patience …not exactly fun) Unfortunately I have a son who is very much like me and it has been quite a challenge to get him to be more diligent in his daily work. I have read and tried (and still trying) the book “Manager’s of Their Homes” which is a good book about scheduling. Well that book is for another post!

Since I thought that book was good, I looked at their new book about chores. I have not purchased this new book, but had someone describe the general idea to me. It seems that the chores are on cards in a vinyl clip-on pouch (like a name badge). The child must do the top chore card, flip it to the back, and do the next chore card until all the chores are done for the day.

So, I decided to try the same concept to his daily schedule. I got the vinyl name badge holders and a lanyard at the local office supply store. Here’s a picture:

I have a card for each school subject with the time it should be started listed at the very top. I also have how many minutes for this subject. Now, I will say that on days we have started on time…it has gone VERY well. But if we don’t start on time in the morning, then the results are not nearly as good. It’s like we are behind from the get go…so we just don’t care…because we will never catch up. (As I look at my messy house…I know the feeling!)

With all the distractions at my house lately…I’m hoping things will calm down and we can get into a groove. I think once he starts to memorize the schedule and get used to it, that it will get easier. I’ll have to post an update in a month or so and see how it is still going.