Blueprint Homeschooling by Amy Knepper

Author:Amy Knepper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Day Publishing
Published: 2014-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

DIY Curriculum Step #7: Manage your resource lists.

This step could be part of Step 6 if you manage it correctly. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. During my first year of planning with this method, I used colored index cards. For each subject I was planning, I used a different color of index card so I could easily find all my science or history plans at a glance.

In the upper right-hand corner, I wrote the week number and then circled it. I had blue cards for history numbered 1through 36, green cards for science numbered 1through 36, and pink cards for art numbered 1 through 36. Across the top line, I wrote the main topic or course of study for that week for that subject. For history, this included the page numbers of the encyclopedia I was using for my spine, plus two or three keywords.

On the lower lines of the index cards, I wrote the titles and authors of the books I planned to check out from the library. For science, I listed books to borrow from the library. I also wrote the title of the book and page number for any experiments we planned to do. If there was a website I wanted to visit, I wrote the web address. I also wrote a list of all the supplies needed to perform any planned experiments. My art cards were similar, with notes about the art project we would be doing and lists of needed supplies for it.

The great thing about using index cards in this way is that they are easily sortable. You can get a week behind in history and a week ahead in science, and you can still see everything you need at any given time. As I was preparing for those weeks, I would often shuffle through my cards, purchasing supplies and requesting library resources about two weeks in advance so we would have them when they were needed.

Why don't I continue to use index cards? My first excuse is that I want to see everything I'm doing for any given week all at once on one page. The truth is, I'm too lazy to be quite that color-coded and organized anymore.

Two years ago, I put together a thirty-six-page color-coded document in Google Drive (I think it was Google Docs then) that had all of my plans for each subject along with book and supply lists for each subject. It contained all the links to my art projects (along with thumbnail pictures of the finished projects!) and science experiments right there in the document. It was lovely. It was a work of art, to be honest. I still open it up just to admire it and laugh at myself sometimes.

I don't get quite that pretty about it anymore, for a number of reasons. Putting everything in a final computerized document makes it difficult for me to move things around, and sometimes I really need to shift a subject or alter my plans without adjusting an entire thirty-six-page document.

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