Lesson Plans

Today in the afternoon I went out to Border's, my favorite place for lesson planning. Sometimes it seems such a bother to pack everything up and drag it there, but it is so worth it to have quiet--of course, it isn't absolutely quiet there, but none of the noise is directed at me, so I find it no problem at all to tune it out. Plus I can order delicious coffee drinks, which are a luxury I seldom have....

Today I focused on Julia. I got her planned from next week until the end of February. The first plan is usually the hardest, because I have to go through the calendar and figure out all the holidays and half days involved (we have half days when there are certain clubs or field trips going on, for birthdays and occasionally just for fun). Plus I gave us Leap Day off--because after all, that day is only once every 4 years, so why not? Also, there are some things the girls have in common, such as French, gym, art, and projects for History and Science clubs that is more work to plan for the first girl--I just copy those assignments into the other girl's planner.

The biggest surprise? As March begins, Julia will only have 18 pages left in her math book for the year! So I guess the remainder of the time will be spent on doing those test prep workbooks--she has her first standardized test next year, so it's time to practice with the little circles. That will be a good math review as well. I was also pleased to note that the next section of her book deals with graphs, beginner fractions (shaded shapes and figuring out that 2/3 is greater than 1/2 by looking at the shading), time and money, geometric shapes, measurement and conversions such as inches to feet to yards, cups to pints to quarts to gallons, etc. The reason I am pleased is because I have always found these topics to be very easy to cover and get done--as opposed to this first half of the year, which was multi-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division--very boring and labor intensive, designed to cause the maximum number of arguments every time the book is opened.

Also, I admitted defeat on the science CD I thought both girls could handle (it claims to be appropriate for K-12, where you just assign harder material and projects the older the student is). Unfortunately, it bored Julia senseless and she never wanted to do it. It is full of Internet links, and she just never wanted to click on anything and read what was there. So I took the far less inspired route and assigned topics from a 3rd grade complete curriculum that I had from the days of Rachel but hadn't cracked open for Julia. While I was there I also decided to use the social studies curriculum--we had been using the American Girls books and then making little unit studies around the time period--but frankly it was a lot of work! Since I was already using the science, I decided to switch and let Julia read the American Girls for fun. She does enjoy the books a lot.

So tomorrow afternoon I will head out to plan for Rachel. I will bring Ben's books along, too (which I did today also, but after 3 hours was headachy and decided I was finished) and possibly get to him. But even if I don't, his plans are by far the simplest and I can plan the week while he does assignments if I have to. Or, I could go out on New Year's Eve or Day, or the following weekend if need be.

It's really much harder to plan three sets of lessons than two!

--Jen