How DO You Homeschool?!?!

That seems to be the question I've gotten the most, especially after posting my Hooray for Homeschooling entry. 

While everyone has their own system (the beauty of homeschooling in general, right?), I've broken down ours so that those who are curious can see the process behind schooling the monsters every week!

Since we only school Monday - Thursday, Friday tends to be our review day.  Any lessons the monsters didn't quite understand we'll talk about & maybe do an extra worksheet or two for.  Also gives me time to record weekly grades in my binder, sort last week's assignments into each of the monsters' binders, & as well as get their planners ready for the week!

As far as assignments are concerned, we're still using Time4Learning as our main/core curriculum.  However, the Activity Planner function & I disagree on how many assignments per week to give the monsters in each subject & where they fall (seriously, Chapter Tests on Tuesdays were NOT a good thing here!), so I've since nixed following the dates.  Instead I follow the assignments in order, but divide the units to better suit our 4 day/week time frame.  Hence the big red line.  For some subjects we're still on track for, while others we're way ahead.  Especially in Science & Social Studies were there aren't as many lessons for 1st & 2nd Graders, although I'm pleased to say x1 is now taking on Grade 3 Science like a champ & both he & x2 start on Grade 3 Social Studies next week! 

As you may have noticed by now, we do daily journals & spelling here as well, which are both in addition to the T4L work. 
For Journals I have an awesome workbook filled with daily 1st-3rd grade prompts as well as a list I've come up with myself, which can be found here if you're interested!

As far as Spelling is concerned I'll look over the Language Arts & Extensions assignments for each child for the upcoming week & go from there.  This week x2 happens to be starting a reading unit on Native Americans, so I borrowed the 10 most frequently used words on her worksheets & made a word search & crossword puzzle with them from Discovery Education's PuzzleMaker.  Same for x1, only his are 10 words dealing with "fl" this week.
Every day is also a new spelling assignment.  Mondays are 3x each, Tuesdays are ABC order, Wednesdays are sentences, & Thursdays are Review/Quiz days!

After the grades are recorded & weekly assignments in place, I print off the coordinating worksheets from T4L as well as hunt on Education.com for any supplemental work, which especially comes in handy for Science & Social Studies!  They literally have just about everything you need, any subject, any grade level.  It's probably my favorite schooling resource thus far.  I highly recommend getting a membership, as the 10 freebie sheets per month aren't nearly enough!



When printing is done, it's time to sort.  I cut out/laminated days of the week for each monster & paper clip stacks by the days the coordinating assignments are supposed to be done & stick them in their folders for the upcoming week!

& that's pretty much it in a nutshell.  Collect grades, sort papers, print assignments, & how we lesson plan around here.

I've also gotten the question several times about "how many hours do you spend per week getting classwork together?"  Honestly, at least 2-3.  & that's solid, without interruptions.  & by interruptions I mean mainly x3, who likes to look all sweet & innocent as she rearranges my already sorted paperwork. >.<

Just another reason why I start on Fridays! lol

If you all have any other questions, please feel free to ask!  I'd also love to hear about how you all go through your lesson plans every week!

Happy schooling. :)