Learning about Life, Learning about Him, Teaching about Life, Teaching about Him
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 moreJust 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.
Why “Top 4” you ask? Well, because these are the only sites I actually use. I am not compensated in any way for endorsing these sites. Just had to say that to make myself sound important.
I’m sure many of you have already purchased your curriculum for this school year. If you haven’t, or if you still need to buy a few more items, here are my top four favorite sites for curriculum and books (I inserted the hyperlinks for the sites at the end of each of the site’s description, but they disappeared when publishing my post. Just hover your cursor at the end of each paragraph and you’ll see that you can clink the invisible link there!):
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