Homeschool Planning

Just in case you didn’t know, we school all year round and we usually start our school in August and finish in July. I decided to follow this format in view of the fact that we are often blessed with a pregnancy and baby every one-and-a-half years So if we follow the normal Singapore system, I’d be very stressed to finish all that is required.

Once the school year has ended in July, I’d take 2 to 3 weeks off to plan for the next school year. This plan is obviously not set in stone. I would review it in December and tweak the necessary kinks.

So here we are in December and since I was on the roll from the last post about planners I thought I should share how I plan our homeschool.

A word about curriculum used and subjects covered in our homeschool :

From aged 6 onwards all children will use Student of the Word for our Bible study and English. Then, once they reach primary school level (aged 7 and above), we follow the Ministry of Education’s syllabus for Maths, Science and Chinese.

Why?

Simple answer – in order to homescchool and be exempted from the Compulsory Education Law, we need to send our children to sit for the PSLE exams when they reach 12 years old.

I personally feel that in order to prepare them adequately, I need them to know the local syllabus well before venturing out to learn the “extras”. Besides, in this season of my life, I do not have the luxury of time to let them learn another syllabus and then cramp the local requirements on the child in the last 2 years before PSLE.

Full Year Planning

I do a full year of planning for the kindergarten and primary school levels only. And I have found that the best place to get all the required MOE textbooks and assessment books is from Popular Bookstore. I must say that the main branch at Bras Basah has the best and most comprehensive books. The rest tend to carry dribs and drabs of certain publishers books only. Makes for very frustrated shopping since I can’t finish it in one session.

And in order to save even more time (and temptation!) I’d usually have my own booklist in hand first and then go shopping. After many years of trial and error and from talking to more experienced mothers, I usually zoom in on a few quality publishers.

After I have all the books in hand, I would then divide up the lessons into the number of weeks we are schooling for that particular year. We school for 4 weeks and take 1 week off throughout the year. We also take 2 weeks off for Christmas and Chinese New Year. Public Holidays and birthdays are also no-school days.

An easy example is this - if there are 100 lessons in Science to be covered in 50 weeks, then I need to cover 2 Science lessons per week. But if there are 200 lessons of Maths to be covered in 50 weeks, then I need to cover 4 lessons of Maths per week.

I do this for each subject for each child. I key all these into Donna Young’s typeable calendar. Looks much neater than when I used to write it out!

This full year planner is only for my eyes. The children have no idea what they are going to cover at this point in time.

Weekly Lesson Planner

Once the full year planning for each child is completed, I will transfer it week-by-week into each child’s personal planner file. I would transfer 4 weeks’ worth of lesson plans each time. Then I would transfer another 4 weeks’ worth during our one week break.

I used to do up 6 months’ worth of lesson plan each time. Not only would it stress me, it also didn’t allow me to make any modifications if the child should skip school due to illness or some other unforseen occurence. This way afforded me much more flexibility.

I also combine all the children’s weekly lessons into my own DIY Planner. This way, I know what they are supposed to do without me taking out my master planner file OR ask them what they are supposed to do. Also it keeps me accountable. I will make notations on my DIY Planner to indicate if I have graded their work and/or if they have done their required corrections. Being accountable is very important to me coz I tend to slack off as the days go by

Each child then has his/her own planner pages to tick off when they have completed their assignments. This teaches them to take responsibility for their own work and lifts some burden off me. However, I need to be very diligent in checking that they really did do what they ticked off!

Half-yearly Review

Come December I would re-look over the full year planner and see if we are on target and check to see what needs to be tweaked or thrashed. Some assessment books look good but may not agree with the child’s capabilities. Then it means I’ve got to spend more time at Popular Bookstore or surf the net for more appropriate books.

And that’s how we plan our homeschool for the kindergarten and primary level children. For the nursery level (3 & 4 yr olds), I am even more relaxed I don’t do full year planning at all. I just gather a few books that I like while browsing around at the bookshops or online and then we do a few pages a day.

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For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.