A Planner Loving Mom who Needs Help Planning Homeschool

I confess, I own a planner. A Happy Planner, which I find somewhat ironic since my son's doctor has referred to be as "appropriately cynical" in the past. I own planner stickers, different colored pens and highlighters. But much like my three year old's baby book, my planner often finds itself abandoned.

When I began my journey of homeschooling my son last October, I was excited that not only did the Mother Goose Time curriculum that I was using come with a Teacher Guide, but it also included it's own planner. These items, along with a great matrix of skills ranging from social/emotional to fine motor helped get me excited about planning again.

My cheerful box adorned with school buses arrives weeks before the start of a new month and theme. So I am able to break into the new box on a wild Saturday night and pull out my Teacher Guide, Planning Journal and the list of skills we plan to cover in the month. I then glance over the skills sheet and open the Teacher Guide. I check out recommended books that we might have or that I want to make note of in my planner to grab at the library, I jot down the skills and activities that I want to highlight for my son in my planner on the corresponding days. I then consider the daily topics.

During this month's Alphabet Island, I noticed we would be looking at caves and volcanoes. I knew we planned on going to the Field Museum in Chicago, where these topics would be brought to life. So I actually switched topics around to better fit our schedule. That also hits home on a major selling point of homeschool, flexibility. In nine months, I've found that as long as you work within the theme of that month, you can make changes without interrupting the flow of the program.
I then consider if there are any places that we can go locally that will enhance our learning.
A new playground, with a great stream and lots of places to climb, look out and explore opened, so we checked it out and pretended to be the captain of a ship making important navigating decisions. We also talked about waterfalls and visited some locally at the Chicago Botanic Garden. All of these ideas I marked in my planner as ideas to fit into our schedule.

One more thing that I love about these materials is that they offer suggestions of which projects to keep and which to maybe just photograph. I appreciate that they help make this decision for me, so I don't become a closeted art project hoarder!

This June, I received the curriculum free of charge in exchange for my thoughts and experiences. I'm happy to be back to planning our summer learning and adventures with the help of Mother Goose Time.