Homeschool Prep Work: Creating the Skeleton Calendar, part I

[edited to note: WordPress' posting window is so small, making editing difficult...and for some reason the spell feature isn't working...and I'm typing at night in the dark, so as to not wake my husband...thank goodness for laptops.  So, yes, I homeschool and *gasp* make spelling mistakes without catching them myself.  Deal.] 

Inspired by a message board homeschool “how to” question, I thoguht I’d share a bit of how I plan for our school year.  In this post I’ll cover creating skeleton calendars.  I create one of these first so that during the remainder of the planning process I can “see” where I need to slot assignments without overloading my teens.  Future posts will cover scheduling fieldtrips, how I break down both purchased and homemade lessons into day-size pieces, how those items are tracked using an index-card method, tracking independent study and external instruction, reading lists (middle/high school), and pulling everything together in a master notebook as well as creating a guidance-tracking notebook for each student. 

To shed light on why I do things the way that I do, here are a few pertinant facts you need to know prior to my demonsrations:

• I homeschool three teens (just completed 9th, 10th and 11th grade).
• My state requires homeschoolers to log educational activities as the instruction occurs.
• We are also required to capture titles of any reading materials used.
• Homeschoolers in my state are not required to track attendance.
• I incorporate both purchased curriculum, created/homemade curriculum/unit studies in our routine.  The kids, additionally, each have independent studies of interest and receive external instruction.
• We opt for portfolio evaluations and include more than our state law requires.
• All three of our teens operate on different levels, have extreemly different interests and capacities for self-instruction.
• Referencing index card method…each of our kids have their own shoe box for storage.  However, I keep a master notebook, complete with a traditional lesson plan layout (filled in after assignmetns are completed).  The lesson plan layout is part of my skeleton calendar.
• Probably most significant for you to know is that I have OCPD and OCD.  As such, lists, forms, grids and patterns mean a great deal.  I’m the Queen of Over-Doing…so much of what I’ll share here could likely be skipped altogether or shortened.  I say this incase you are a homeschooler feeling overwhelmed with the planning process…I do/produce these steps because they are, in my mind, necessary as a natural bridge.  Take what is useful to you, and don’t be afraid to lay things aside.
• Everything I share with you could easily be created at home, likely found on the i-net or purchase/xeroxed from certain homeschool resources.

To keep from overscheduling, you need to know in advance how much time you have available.  To do this, I first create blank monthly calendars for the school year.   In red ink (any color, just so it stands out from pencil/blue ink/black ink) I write in our family’s important dates, such as holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, scheduled surgeries, family vacations and the like.   Any dates that require pre-prep work I’ll make a notation with the same pen estimating how much time I’ll need to set aside (for example, the day before Thanksgiving I schedule the entire day off for cooking/cleaning).

After this, using pencil (as it will be edited throughout the year), I pencil in all the known/existing routine occurences in our family’s schedule.  If you have music lessons every Saturday at noon, or a park-play date the third Thursday of every month, or if you want to take advantage of the museum’s free entrance after 4p on Tuesdays…mark these things now.  Likewise, if your homeschool group’s kick of meeting is on August 18th, or you’ll take the entire first week of April off for Spring Break, you should mark that down now as well.  Typically we don’t want to change these things around…but since you’ll use this calendar (if you use my system) for the entire school year, you want something editable.  If at this time you want to also pencil in when you’ll be throwing little Susie’s birthday party or an expected family vacation to Grandma’s house…this would be a wise time to fill in the calendar.

For homeschoolers, fieldtrips and spur of the moment educational activities rely as much on available funds as anything else.  To help me “eyeball” what I can and can’t do reasonably, I take a colored pen and circle pay-dates for the year.  (I use a small circle, just around the date itself, rather than the entire day’s block.)  This will help me remember in September when I can more likely afford that trip to Super-Cool-Fun-Place in February.

Now I figure out exactly when I want school to start and end.  I’ll leave the structure of attendance up to the reader to decide (please check your state guidelines).  I’ve heard wonderful stories of homeschooling through the entire year as well as some families who approach a # of weeks “on” and a # of weeks off in rotation of one another.  I’ll place large circle around the entire day so I won’t forget.

My husband never has the same days off from one week to another, but fortunately his work provides weekly vacation calendars.  I take a highlighter and just make a quick swipe across the very top of each day/block that he’ll be home.  I want to include family time when he’s available and this little tip helps me accomplish this goal when planning our school year. 

If you haven’t already, schedule in two to three Academic Break Days.  This is different than planned vacations…this is more like a carrot on the stick to carry you through burn out the rough times (”if I can just hold out for one more week” idea).   Following this, schedule three to four Teacher’s Planning Days.  Teacher Planning Days can take on many forms.  Mine are days set aside for me to catch up on logging grades, revamping my planned lessons, research, shop for supplies, et cetera.  My teens are old enough to love these days as days off as well…but they can choose to catch up on projects or work that they have, or to devote the entire day to an interest/hobby without interruption. 

By this time your calendar should be looking pretty impressive.  And there might be an urge to really fill that calendar up with all sorts of activities, trips, etc. so you have the satisfaction of seeing an entire year worth of “stuff.”  STOP THAT!  Don’t do anything beyond what I’ve described.  This will become your day planner for the second section of your master notebook.  Hole punch your months print-offs, and only add to the calendar when necessary (doctor appointments, field trips with groups, that sort of thing).  Day to day things will be added other places.  This is just for quick at-a-glance moments.

So you might have caught that we’ve just completed the second section of your master notebook.  That’s because sometimes the monthly-at-a-glance is not what we need so much as a yearly-at-a-glance calendar.  That’s our front section.  I’ve created a yearly calendar for 2007-2008 for uploading (MSWord2003).  If you are handy enough with border/shading options, you can select the dates which are pretty much don’t touch/add/mess with and highlight them with a color to stand out.  Or you can use the old fashioned pen-highlighter by hand.  Knock yourself out.

Now you’ll have a pretty good idea of how many hours you have in a day, on any given day.  That isn’t to say that nothing will come along to alter our plans…but we’re going to prepare for that by using the index card method instead of saying “Math ppXX, odd#’s, January 14″ and “Math ppXX, Chpt Rvw Test, January 15″ when Johnny is no where near ready to take a chapter review test by the fifteenth. 

I’m running out of time this evening, so I’ll continue with part two of the Skeleton Calendar tomorrow, and then discuss dividing up assignments into bite size chunks.  Once you have that method down, we’ll implement the index card system.

Monthly Calendars 2007 and 2008 these are blank and run from July through June.  You can always type in your information and colorize using the font feature of MSWord 2003.

 Year at a Glance 2007 and 2008 this is just what it promises…a one page glance at the 2007/08 school year.  Also created in MSWord 2003.  Now, as a sneak preview of my lesson planner, I’ll include a scanned photo from the recent school year:

And here’s the right side of the same document: