Easy Homeschool Planning - Minimalist Homeschooling

hi guys it's Zahra with Zahra PhD comm and I'm coming to you today with a super minimal way to do lesson planning for your home school and it's my version of reverse scheduling actually so I use a combination of different schedules but this is one way that I like to record our learning in a very relaxed way so I'm gonna show you all it requires is a sheet that looks like something like this and if you like this pretty download this is the sort of thing that I share in our Facebook group and so it's completely free it's in the documents there you join our Facebook group at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash minimalist homeschooling Zara za RA so ya join our group and you'll find this in the documents otherwise just get a piece of paper and write your own you know little squares on it and what you're gonna do is print out one of these for each of your children and you're gonna write their name up here and their season up here maybe it's your first quarter maybe it's for a month whatever it is however you want to do your lesson planning and I'm assuming that if you're watching this that you are familiar with the book minimalist homeschooling a values based approach to maximize learning and minimize stress and this sheet is sort of based on the layout from that guide about how to structure your minimalist home-school so I'm coming from the point now where you've already identified your values you've already identified your priorities now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty of doing the most valuable things in your homeschool so major and minor subjects topics they're gonna go in these skinny little boxes over here you're gonna label your boxes over on the side these are your labels they're vertical labels just because I thought it looked neato and it could be field trips could be chores could be a business your child has started it could be hands-on activities it could be apprenticeship it can be whatever it is that you have decided as them are the main parts of your child's education this season and you know what that is you know what your values are you know what your children needs to learn children need to learn you know what your state requirements are and so hopefully this will be reflective of all of those things right it'll be individualized for your student six topic areas is what this is designed for once you have your six topic areas in you're gonna use these boxes now as your rough lesson plan so in here you're gonna write your resources if one of these is labeled field trips you're gonna list the field trips you want to do this season if one of these is labeled math you're gonna write you know for my 4th grader I might write Beast Academy on here I might write extra math Oregon here which is a free website if you're not familiar with it helps children learn their math facts and and learn to memorize them very quickly so it's a quick little program the kids can do daily to drill their math facts for example so I might write Beast Academy I mean right extra bad org but basically I'm going to fill this out with the resources that we intend to use for each of these subjects so far so good if there is some a read aloud we're going to use I'm gonna write that down if I want my child to read something on their own I'm gonna write that down if I'm expecting them to read something and do written narration or copy work I'm gonna write that down okay so far so good if we're studying religion I'm gonna write down what book we're using for that if they have a business I'm gonna write down sort of our goals for that business or if there's a book that they're gonna be reading related to that business or a series of lectures or time that they're spending on it I'm gonna write that down okay then you're gonna print out another sheet for each child and I do one for each kid because my kids are individual my kindergartner is doing different things from my second-grade who is doing different things from my fourth grader and if there are items that overlap I just write them on all three sheets so obviously they're all gonna go on the same field trips together so that would appear on each of their sheets and many of the read Aloud's will appear on multiple sheets okay so once that's done now you gonna print out a new one for each town then it's gonna be blanking you're gonna write the week up there and the child's name so you might write April 30th through May 4th for Albert Einstein I don't know what your child's name is Galileo and then you're gonna just write down your subjects and your topics in these six labels that's it that's all you're going to do on Sunday night is print one out label it for the week and put some labels on each of your boxes that mirrors your lesson lesson plan your resource list okay then as the week goes on you're gonna have a sheet of resources you're gonna work your way through them and as you do things you will write down on your blank piece of paper throughout the week what you accomplished what you actually do in a day so some people call this reverse scheduling or reverse lesson planning so at the end of the week you will have a retrospective look at what was accomplished so the difference between doing it this way instead of just keeping a piece of paper where you write it all down is that this gives you sort of a roadmap if you're filling out in advance your six main focus topics then as the week goes on you have a really easy way of telling what you need to spend more time on or would like to spend more time on right so if one of these skis squares is looking a little sparse then you know you need to pick up that book and give it a little bit more attention right so I don't like just having a blank sheet where I just write things down because I'm constantly trying to think in the back of our mind what else was it I wanted to get done this week what else is it that we're focusing on this quarter right and I'm constantly worried that we're missing something we're not giving something the attention that I wanted to give it right and that's the advantage of having a lesson plan written out is that you are when you make a lesson plan it's really nice to be like okay I'm gonna make sure that we are giving math the attention it deserves every day and I'm gonna make sure that we are reading this quality literature and so to just go from that security of having it all laid out to you to completely switching to just a reverse schedule where you just write down what you do is a bit of a leap for people because you're constantly at least for me constantly trying to remember okay what is it what else is it that I should be focused on and so when I do it this way and I have it spelled out that these are the six areas that we are focusing and I can put little tally marks so I don't have to write extra math four times I can write extra math and put in for tally marks and know at the end of the week you know what he did extra math four times he did three math lessons he practiced his math twice he read three chapters in Tom Sawyer and we went on this field trip and he practiced the piano and he went to swim practice or whatever it is at least I have these headings to direct our week and to help keep us on track and so the nice thing about this too is depending on how old your children are you can give them more and more responsibilities so when you're making your resource list you can include them on you know whatever whatever for what is our focus going to be what are our priorities this season and help them choose those six topics help let them help you choose the resources that they really want to use and let them write down what they complete in a day now you're not gonna just overnight have these incredibly responsible children who remember to write it all so expect that to be a learning experience and something else that you can nurture in your children that they start taking responsibility for their own record-keeping but that's definitely an option with this as well it doesn't all have to fall on the parent teacher kids can start taking responsibility also for looking at their resource lists and picking and choosing what they're going to focus on in a day and getting their own well-rounded education and managing their own time so that's another benefit for this instead of spelling out you know on Monday you need to do X then Y then Z if you give them more of an open-ended these are the things we need to work on this week some kids are highly motivated by that and it could be in and of itself a really good learning experience so that's it so I will put a link in the description below this to go find this sheet if you want it otherwise feel free to just scribble out some squares on your own piece of paper and if you'd like this go ahead and subscribe to this YouTube channel and you will be notified of any new videos I put out and you can also find my blog at WWDC comm where simple is the new smart and I also have a Facebook page that's just facebook.com forward slash minimalist homeschooling and that is another place where I post a lot of updates and shareable materials new blog posts new videos funny memes things like that so hopefully I'll see you around and I would love to hear if this helps you I would love to hear if you already reverse schedule and go ahead and leave me a comment and I will hopefully see you soon have a great day bye bye

Channel: Zara PhD

Views: 5,365

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: homeschool plan, homeschool planning, reverse schedule, minimalist homeschooling, simple minimal homeschool, easy homeschool plan

Id: NXZlSLSKpx4

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 29 2018