Lesson Plans

There are probably as many ways to homeschool as there are homeschoolers. I know some homeschooling parents that buy all their curriculum. I completely understand the appeal to buying a ready-made curriculum. All the work is already done as far as writing the lesson plans, assignments, tests, etc. and I'm sure they stay far more organized than I ever am. On the flip side, it's very expensive and if you change your mind about what you want to cover or if you move through it faster than expected, you've got the added expense of buying more.

There are online instructional resources that you can buy, and for math, we have chosen to go this route. We use ALEKS, among other teaching resources, and have had some success with with it. There's a monthly fee or yearly if you want to commit to it that long (they offer a free trial), and it includes practice problems, instruction and tests as well as continual progress reports. It moves at the child's pace and the cost doesn't change even if you go faster through the material. The downside is that Casia does more math on the computer than with paper and pencil and sometimes this leads to her doing math in her head when she should be writing it down to work it out. It also means she picks up sloppy habits in her notation that makes it tough for others to understand her steps. So we don't rely entirely on ALEKS. We've used other books and lesson plans that Jacob or I have developed depending on the topic she is working on in ALEKS. I do like how it retests her understanding of previously covered topics, just to make sure she doesn't have any gaps and it lets us know, based on what she has already mastered, what she is ready to tackle next. I don't think it stands alone well, but we've been using it as the basis of her math instruction off and on since Kindergarten (before she was given accommodations in school).

For every other subject I teach Casia, I develop my own curriculum and lesson plans. Mostly, I like doing it this way. But it is very, very time consuming. I can spend up to five or more hours a week planning lessons for the upcoming week. I use the internet and library as my primary resources for ideas and materials. I have a text book that forms the backbone of the science curriculum, but I am always supplementing it with lab experiments, videos, handouts, worksheets or other reading. In writing, I usually try to incorporate an assignment that corresponds to another subject area like history or science. 

In an effort to cut down on the amount of time that I spend surfing the web for ideas and printouts, I signed up for a free trial of Lesson Planet. There are so many sites out there for lesson plans, but this one actually gave me a free trial (I don't want to plop down the monthly or annual fee without knowing what I'm getting). It's $40 a year and it allows you to search based on grade level(s), type of activity, whether it's a lesson plan or work sheet you are looking for, and  of course, subject. 

On day one of my free 10-day trial, I was so excited, I thought a couple of clicks later and I'd have all the lessons for the week done. It wasn't that simple. For science that week, when it selected my criteria it came back with 50+ links. I had the chapter in the textbook that explained the topic, but I wanted a diagram or a  couple of worksheets that Casia would have to answer using her textbook. And most importantly, I didn't want to have to write any of it myself (which is what I usually do). I did end up finding what I was looking for, but it still took more than an hour. And that was just one subject. My trial period for Lesson Planet ran out a few weeks ago and mostly due to poor planning on my part, I didn't make the most of my free trial, so I ended up signing up for one year to really get a feel for it. The verdicts not out yet on whether I'll get my $40 out of it.