Planning for Princess

Here are a few more items I picked up for Princess' school time & Busy Box. Many of them I found at the Dollar Tree. I ADORE that place!
Wooden lacing beads, wooden magnetic numbers & wooden magnetic letters.

These are for her to play with in her Busy Box & water table.

These are to use with crafts & with her 1+1+1=1 activities.

For her Busy Box. I may even let her have them for bath time too. =)

These will be fun to use with paint.

PERFECT for her Busy Box! I had priced these & was thrilled to find one at Target for only $2! Dave laughed at my childish glee.

I bought this to use as her Busy Box. I bought Rubbermaid because I wanted something that would hold up to playtime & that had a tight, snap-on lid.

I have a few more items I found at the curriculum sale last Friday. I'll share those soon!

My Daily Binder

And last but not least here is mine. I used some things I have had here in the past & then added some new things given to me by a friend & ideas I gleaned from that same, creative friend. I hope you like it!
(BTW, if you want to see a larger image just click on it.)

I bought this several years ago. It's huge but I love it. I am a storage gal and adore all the pockets, zippers, handles & do-dads. Lol!

I got this idea from Rhonda! I have my own pocket with my daily school tools. In addition to what the kids have in theirs I have a Sharpie and Post-Its. What would I do without those?

My calendar. On the back is 2011.

Our Weekly Schedule

The kids each have one of these in their binders as well.

I didn't post all the days for privacy. I didn't think posting where we would be every day & evening to the world would be a good idea. =0)

This is our Daily Learning Schedule.

The kids each have one of these in there binders too.

This is the list I was referring to in Sweet Pea's post. I designed hers after mine. Since mine was several years old, (made it when Elvis was a few months old), I tweaked it. Like Sweet Pea's mine is laminated to save on time, paper & ink.

Week At A Glance

The children's Daily Learning Schedules.

I color coded them for the kids. Bugsy = Blue

(You've probably guessed but the barrette is to cover up real names. It's not a permanent part of the sheet. Lol!)

Red = Elvis

Green = Boo Bear

Pink = Sweet Pea

Grading Scale

Sweet Pea has the same one in her binder.

My place to write down the kid's daily assignments & accomplishments.

I received all the colored pages from a great friend. Thank you! =0)

The white sheet is to record our family reading.

Field Trips.

This is the same one the kids have in their binders. I will record Bugsy's for him.

Long term assignments I have given to the children.

If I don't write it down, "POOF!", it's gone! ROTFL!

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I have some other helps in there: Some hints from Fly Lady, a slot for reward stickers, a list for menus, contact info., shopping list, planning pages, sign language alphabet, extra pages, all 3 soccer schedules, some more helpful tip pages from my great friend, AWANA events calendar, pantry inventory, freezer inventory, office supply store reward card #'s, and notepad. There are lots of cool pockets too. I have my notes, Sweet Pea's 4-year plan of study and misc. worksheets in those. I love having everything in one place! In the morning I grab it & head downstairs ready to start!

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Thanks again, Rhonda for all your inspiration!

Sweet Pea

As promised here is a view of Sweet Pea's binder. She is in high school now and therefore has many extras in her binder.

Like the younger ones she has a pocket to keep her daily school tools.

I am having her keep her own attendance sheet this year.

She has an added daily checklist. I did one like this for myself years ago. I thought she might like one too. I laminated it so she can use it daily.
I blocked out names for privacy. The arts & crafts & K-5 skills are to be done with Bugsy. These are not every day but at least twice per week so I put them on the daily sheet. Playtime is with Princess.

Her learning checklist.

She is keeping an exercise log this year too.

This is not only for her health but for her P.E. credit.

I got this idea from another source and loved it. She is keeping a daily/weekly journal to help her grow not only in her academics but in her work life, spiritual life, family life, etc. Everything is based on our faith.

Another category from her journal.

There are many more that are titled "The Importance of..........

..............God's Creation & Design, .........God's World, ........Personal Accomplishments, .........Relationships with Others, .......Spiritual Gifts & Creativity, ..........Communication, ..........Reading. Like the above photos they have sub-categories after the category titles. These are to help her reflect on her goals, her growth & her God. I feel this is the time in her life where she starts to seriously reflect on who she is and who God has created her to be. To seek His will & to discover what an amazing creation of God she is.

Her Library Book record.

These are free pages to journal as she wishes. She can take notes, journal in general about her day or whatever. She loves animals which is why I selected this design for her.

These are for her science. She is doing it with our co-op this year.

We will be placing lab sheets either in here or a notebook. I am letting her decide.

Daily Planner

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In addition to the above photos she has her learning schedule, field trip report page, 4-year high school course of study, & grading scale. She has extra pages of each in the back placed in page protector sheets. There are dividers and tabs for placement of her completed work too. Her binder is a 3 inch one & quite full! =0)

Learning Schedules

Last night & this morning I have been working hard on our Learning Schedules for this coming school year. I've been trying to decide between doing big chunks of learning/subjects once or twice a week or doing little bits of almost every subject every day. After asking some fellow homeschool mamas, (Thank you, ladies!), and thinking on it I have decided to do a little of both. Lol! How's that for a decision? Really, what made me come to that decision was the fact that my kids all have different learning styles and are at different learning levels. Sweet Pea is starting high school and as one wise h.s. mama pointed out her studies will be more in depth. Therefore she may need to take "small bites" each day in order to be able to "digest" her studies. With the younger ones, such as Elvis who will be in 3rd grade he might get more out of studying in bigger chunks. We'll be able to do more things if we take a big bite of time for specific subjects rather than little bits every day. It may be easier too in that he might not feel as overwhelmed if he doesn't have a dozen subjects/books to work in every day.

I sat down with each child except for Bugs because he will be in Kindergarten. He won't really understand how to choose so I'll still do most of the choosing for him. I will give him other things to choose from. The older 3 helped decide how they wanted to set up their daily & weekly learning. They seemed to enjoy the one-on-one time & having a say in their days. I was proud of their wise choices. I'm hoping they will stick to this & it will help them to become more responsible.

For Elvis, (3rd grade), he decided to choose daily from his subjects.

The blue cards are subjects that must be done daily. The red cards are ones he will choose from. The green cards are co-op subjects. For now they will be included in his "get to choose" pile but that may change to being assigned every Wednesday.
I will choose about 5-6 cards from the red & green cards every day. Then I will allow Elvis to choose 3 or 4 from these. This way I am certain that he will be getting enough every week. We will also keep a log.

This is the Course of Study for this year for both Bugsy (K) & Elvis (3rd).
I wrote in pencil how many times a week each subject needs to be done. This is all subject to tweaking as needed. =)
* = Daily


This is the Course of Study for both Boo Bear & Sweet Pea.
Since they are older & I want them to take more personal responsibility I allowed them to have the choice of me assigning days to their subjects, them assigning days to their subjects, or having them choose daily/weekly as Elvis is doing. I was relieved that both chose to have them assign days. I don't mind doing it but I think it's a great 1st step to responsibility. We decided together how many times a week each subject needed to be done. Then they wrote in what days they wanted to do what.
* = Daily

I took pics of the schedules we wrote out but they are in pencil & the pics came out very light. I'll try to post them if you'd like. I'm going to type them up for myself & the kids later.

BTW, you can click on the photo if you want to see a larger image.

School Prep

I was feeling extremely overwhelmed & even panicky this afternoon. So much still to do! Plus all of my house chores, the extra organizational projects still waiting & my back log of coupons. To top it all off my helper, Sweet Pea, is away all this week & into next week. Yikes! Thankfully, Dave stepped up & helped to get some of the house chores done. He even made dinner, fed the kids & got them to bed. I was able to have some uninterrupted time to work and am now feeling better because of it. Here is some of what I accomplished:

I printed out 4 of these, one for each child.

I ended up only having 2 clear folders so I used regular ones for the boys' notebooks.

Photo of the cover

I love how each page has Scripture & a place where they can draw and/or write.

Dave, Sweet Pea & I all want to start eating better & lose some weight. I found this chart online. It looks like an easy way to see if we have fufilled our goals of eating from each food group. It can also help us see if we are eating too much from one group.

I want the girls to take more responsibility for keeping track of & completeing their assignments. It is my hope that these pages will help them in this goal.

I will hand these out from time to time when I see them doing an extra good job in both their chores & schoolwork. I plan to have a reward box too.

I am putting together a binder of worksheets, art projects, craft ideas/recipes & coloring pages for Bugsy. I am choosing ones that can have him be an independant as possible.

The boys have been fighting & bickering A LOT. It is driving me crazy. I found this chart online & will use it to help motivate the boys to stop. Maybe I'll even use the ice cream certificates as a reward!

Here is a sample of an art project. He will either color this or I will ahead of time. We'll help him cut it out and then he can glue the ingrediants on & "make" his own pizza. I think he will like this a lot.

I'm making some file folder games for Bugs & Elvis too. This one leans more towards Elvis' age group but I don't see why Bugs couldn't learn. As you can see there are two fish - Even & Odd. The goal is to line up the even coins under the "Even" fish & the odd coins under the "Odd" fish. This way the child learns which numbers are odd & which are even. I colored them myself b/c our color printer is down. Even if it was working color ink is super expensive & not in the budget right now.

I have a bunch more printed out for Bugsy. I still have to color, cut & laminate them. I'm going to have the kids help me color some others and maybe cut them out too.

I almost have all my lesson plans written. Some are for 12 weeks, others about 8 or 9. I have to write Spanish & Bible and then I will be set to start. I have 2 different lesson plan books this year in order to hold all the subjects for all 4 children. I like the set of both of these as they both have big blocks to write in. I bought them both at Target in their dollar section.

I'll be posting more as I get it completed!