I have this Excel file that is titled "My Endless To Do List." I have everything imaginable on it, prioritized based on Stephen Covey's four quadrants: I - urgent and important, II - important but not urgent, III - urgent but not important, and IV - not urgent and not important. I print it out, keep it in my household binder, and update it about once a month. Of course, I add to it by hand throughout the month.
This To Do List, though, is specifically for the next few days, for planning our homeschooling for at least the next several months. Let's see...
- Prayerfully write down some goals and priorities for myself, for each of the children, and for our family. Make a list of what I want our daily life to be like, clearly noting the positive elements towards which all of my planning should be directed.
- Revise that old Mother's Rule of Life and accompanying charts, schedules, and lists to make new drafts to refer to while planning the learning parts of our days. This will need to be adjusted, as I go, but I do better when I have a draft to which to refer.
- Put my draft lesson planning calendars in a notebook that will become my lesson planning notebook (can you believe I do not have one?) and mark in any holidays, feasts, or family celebrations. Make this notebook beautiful by either covering in fabric or adding a lovely graphic and/or quote. This way, as I get each of the following items done, there will be one place to put them all!
- Make a very rough draft daily and weekly schedule. This will include calling the gymnastic coach and narrowing down when we can start classes there, and writing in our other outside obligations, which are really only Little Flowers and park with our homeschool group. Again, as I proceed through each of the following items, I can adjust our schedule as needed.
- Get my liturgical and catechetical plans in order. This includes planning my daughter's First Communion notebook contents and creating my monthly folders (not weekly like Dawn's, although inspired by her - I might work up to that) to hold all the relevant ideas. I also need to figure out my plans to use Who Am I? with my son.
- Plan what will be a part of my Morning Basket, inspired by Jennifer's. Once I finalize what we will do during that time, I need to plan for the time. My thoughts are revolving around liturgical year, prayers, songs, hymns, art and music appreciation, poetry, and nature...maybe. I want to focus on BEAUTY here.
- Pull together the other essentials - reading, writing, and math. I have the materials. I just need to figure out what I want to accomplish with each child.
- Get out the Alphabet Path lesson plans from Elizabeth to see where we left off in June and how to fit that into our learning days. Also decide if I am going to try to finish the last few weeks of Little Saints with my son or just let it go.
- Then, I want to look at my plans for history, geography, and science. I cannot start history right away, because a dear friend is lending me her set of Story of a World Volume 1 book and activity manual and does not return from a trip until September sometime. So, we may leave these three subjects until she returns, so we can first get established with everything else.
- Finally, of course, I need to pull all of this together and cut out whatever will not work or will not fit. I anticipate that I have too much stuff to do!
Wow! Lots to do! Off I go! I'll update periodically. I think I can get numbers one and two done tonight, so I hope to post more tomorrow...
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