I’m the kind of person who lives on checklists and schedules (which I admit, may or may not be a good thing, depending on the situation!). So it was almost impossible for me not to have a detailed lesson plan for homeschooling. Haha.
Because this was most requested on my Instagram last week, I’m sharing with you guys how I currently make my lesson plans.
(NOTE: Emphasis on the word “currently” because I’ve changed my method multiple times and I have no problems with continuing to change it if this current method no longer serves its purpose for us.)
Disclaimer: READ THIS FIRST
Initially, I wasn’t planning on writing a post about this because of the following reasons:
- I know this won’t work for everyone
- This might overwhelm others
So a disclaimer before we begin: I am NOT advocating or even teaching you this method. And this goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway hehe,) you don’t have to do your lesson plans and schedule this same way. If this feels overwhelming for you, then it probably is not the best method for you, and that is absolutely okay!
I am writing this post because a lot of you asked for it on my Instagram and also, it is the kind of post I wish I was able to read when I was starting. So I really hope this helps!
What is a Lesson Plan?
A lesson plan is where I list down the following:
- Lessons we will be tackling that week, arranged by subject
- Chapters in their books that we will be reading
- Ideas for activities related to the topics to be discussed
Why do you need a lesson plan?
Creating a lesson plan was a game changer for me because of the following reasons:
- Allows me to prepare months ahead so that I don’t get overwhelmed preparing daily or weekly.
- I can easily see whether we are on track or not.
- It gives me peace of mind to slow down and not to “rush” whenever I see that we are on track.
I guess lesson planning really depends on your style of teaching. I’m sure there are families that don’t have one and are fine (of course!) For our household though, I consider it a must and I don’t think I can teach as effectively without one.
Why is it arranged weekly?
I divided my lesson plan into weeks and not on a day-to-day basis because I know I wanted to give myself at least a week to complete the tasks. I don’t want to restrict myself into completing certain activities on specific dates.
We do most subjects 2-3x a week only. So if for example, we weren’t able to do Math for Monday and Tuesday, it would be easy to catch up the next few days. The goal is always simply to finish the lessons scheduled for the week.
And for days when we’re feeling a little extra (hehe,) we do advanced lessons. This is great whenever we want to focus on other things the following week (like if we have trips scheduled, want to have an extra long craft time, or tackle a topic that is not part of our schedule, etc.)
How do you choose the topics?
For each subject, I would start by looking at the table of contents of the main curriculum that we will be using for the year and then assign around 2 chapters per week. Of course this would depend on the subject and our priorities.
So for example, I would put two Math and Language Arts lessons per week as our goals because our target is to do Math and Language Arts 2x a week. For History and Science, it’s usually just one chapter a week because we also like to go in depth and work on crafts for each topic.
For subjects where I don’t have a set workbook or curriculum (like Chinese,) I write goals instead. For example, “Learn Body Parts Vocab” for one week, and then “Fruits” for the next. This allows me to prepare materials that will match the topic in advance (like songs, lyrics, crafts, flashcards to be used.)
For some subjects such as Character/Values Education and Art Studies, I have a monthly theme instead of a weekly one so that’s what I put there.
Where did you get ideas for the activities?
I created an “activity” column for certain subjects for crafts and experiments. I really believe that younger kids learn and retain the information better when you give them hands-on activities! And they love it. My 5 year old tells me he loves history and science because there are always crafts. Haha! (Related post: List of lessons and activities I’ve shared on the blog!)
So first, I list down the topics that we will be tackling. Then I fill up the activity column to match the topics. I get ideas for the activities from these sources:
- The workbooks/curriculum we are using
- Pinterest and blogs
That’s it! Haha! Occasionally, I get my own ideas for crafts but this doesn’t really happen a lot! Haha. I really go for Pinterest or I google for ideas from blogs.
When and how long did it take you to make this?
I worked on the lesson plan last December 2019 during our Christmas break. It took me almost the whole month BUT only because I worked on it only for a few minutes or hours per day (December was busy!) And I also planned in detail for the whole year (January-December 2020,) which on hindsight, wasn’t really necessary because, I had to revisit the plan again mid-year.
Note: Official school year for my son starts on July but we were very excited. So excited that we started on January. Haha! Before you judge me, he was also very ready and was excited himself. I also figured it was a good way also to do a trial run before the official school year starts!
Quarterly, Half-Year or Year-Long Plan?
As mentioned above, I created a year-long (12 month) lesson plan but I had to revisit it again mid year because of the following:
- He unexpectedly finished his material for some subjects way ahead of the scheduled time (e.g. Science and Reading,) so we need to adjust.
- We decided not to continue with a certain workbooks that were not working for us (e.g. Filipino,) and we plan to take on new materials.
- Change of plans: I planned a lot of field trips and outside activities, which we can no longer do now because of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
So for now, I’m planning it good for 4 months. I’m not sure if this will be the best plan. We’ll see!
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And there you go! I would just like to make a final note: this lesson plan serves as my guide but I don’t go crazy when things don’t go according to plan. In fact, I’ve purposely designed it to be lighter than what I know we can ACTUALLY accomplish because I want to give us breathing room for unexpected occurences.
Hope this helps you in some way and gives you a couple of ideas, as you plan for your child’s lessons. God bless!
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