Another Year, Another Plan

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Yep, it’s that time of year again – time for planning for next school year. So, the purchase has been made for 2 new 3″ Avery Heavy Duty Binders (our favorite due to the EZ opening) – ds chose the exact same color (which I do not understand – didn’t you always want something new each year?) He even chose the same color of paper – can you tell that he doesn’t like change? DD has chosen new paper and a new notebook color – and she chose a wonderful yellow paper that quite frankly just makes me happy working with it. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

This year, I’ve come up with a new form that we’re using because while last year’s form was helpful in helping me plan the entire year (well, at least the 2nd half of the year), it didn’t fit what I needed perfectly. So, given that I have the capability, I decided to create one that specifically worked for us. Here’s a link in case it might help with your planning : http://bit.ly/school_schedule_view (To download an editable copy, you can use this link – for some reason it doesn’t view correctly, but it is formatted correctly on download: http://bit.ly/school_schedule_download)

Their 3″ Binders contain one of these sheets for every week (printed double sided). I bet you’re wondering where Day 5 is, aren’t you? Well, the kids and I came up with a schedule that we are all happy with – and, Day 5 is included on the form for “Weekly Studies.” This form is based in large part on the weekly studies at Ambleside Online. Here’s a link to our final schedule page that is included for each week: http://bit.ly/school_sched_wk

We then used Legal Tab Dividers that can be purchased at Amazon, Staples or Office Depot, etc… We chose these because there are two packs available that combined go up through number 50 (it should be noted that they come UNpunched so you will have to punch them yourself.) We also used the Office Depot plastic dividers to further divide the weeks into groups of 7 weeks.  Something like this Wilson Jones View-Tab Transparent Dividers, 8 Round Tabs, Letter Size, Multi-Color (W55063) should work well, too.  The 7th week of each unit is a “Fun Week” where the school assignments will not be book based but will instead be activity based ie games, field trips, hands on projects, etc… Here is a link to what our Week 7 schedule looks like: http://bit.ly/wk7_sched

Here are some pictures of what an assembled binder looks like. I chose DD’s for reasons mentioned above.

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