Isn’t a truism in life, that when your kids (or husband) say they can’t find something, you go to look for it and in a nanosecond it’s found? The person who lost the item (I was going to say “the loser” but that sounded harsh), will then be amazed at your sleuthing skills and claim, “I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it!” Yes, they looked everywhere…except where the item was actually located. This printable is for all of those She Sherlocks out there!
Read moreMonth: September 2019
Procedure List to Study the 50 States
I have tried and failed for years to complete a study of all 50 states. We’d start out ready and raring to go, and then the tyranny of all the other core subjects took over and our study would peter out (by the way, to read about the origin of the phrase “peter out,” go here). Part of the problem was that I was constantly trying to add new elements to our study and was not carrying it out in an organized fashion. Enter the Procedure List to Study the 50 States..
Read moreBlessings are like chocolate
As an avid baker, I believe that just about every baked good tastes better with chocolate. I hold fast to the conviction that the reason that a cookie exists is to hold chocolate. Why you would put dead fruit in an oatmeal cookie is beyond me. Sugar cookies are just incomplete, poor things.
Read moreGreater grace
It’s a common occurrence that when people find out I have 8 kids, one of their first comments is, “You must have a lot of patience.” That’s funny. I try to tell them it’s not true, but they don’t believe me.
Read moreLoop Scheduling and Procedure Lists
Just to show that you can teach an old dog new tricks, I am adopting two new homeschool management tools this year: the loop schedule and procedure lists. If you want a more thorough explanation of both, visit Pam Barnhill’s blog posts here and here.
Very simply, a loop schedule is a list of subjects that you will do in a given period of time. (You would not put your daily subjects, such as math, on a loop schedule.) For instance, in the morning either during breakfast or right after, I like to start one subject while the kids are at the table. I might put on my loop list: US State Study, US History, Art Appreciation and English from the Roots Up.
Let’s say we’ve had a holiday weekend and Friday we worked on Art Appreciation in our morning time period. We were off Monday, so on Tuesday I would move to the next subject on the list, which would be English from the Roots Up. On Wednesday we would go to the start of the list and do our US State Study lesson. Thursday we would do US History, and so on.
The great thing about a loop schedule is that it doesn’t matter what day you do which subject. You will have the assurance that each of your subjects will be covered.
A procedure list shows how you will cover a particular subject. It’s more about process. It’s perfect for those subjects in which you will follow the same routine.
These are such simple concepts and yet they have the potential to make a huge difference in your homeschool planning. I hope you can implement these two tools into your homeschool planning to make life easier! I’ll be posting next a detailed procedure list (with a link for a free printable) that we’ll be using to study the 50 states.