A post on homeschooling and planning is long overdue.....I am always excited this time of year as the kids and I look forward to what God would have us learning for the upcoming year. We are pretty relaxed schedule wise....we keep to routines much better. Using loose blocks of time to try to get things done.

Now our homeschooling is so intertwined with real life I wish we did not have to have any routines...but with a big family that would be chaos.....
And remember our God is a God of peace and order and so our homes should try to achieve that as well. At least our goal should be that.....even if we don't always achieve it!! ; )

Over the next few days I will be sharing our planning process as I am in the thick of it right now. We have vacation coming up and then I want to be able to fall back into our routines when we return. We do learn year round but the summer is much more laid back. We like to keep up with math and reading through the summer months.....and the kids all have their notebooks filled with topics that interest them and those studies never end.

I have decided to try workboxes to give my younger guys more independaece this year. You can check out the ideas behind them here at Sue Patricks site.
It seems the system is the talk of all homeschoolers right now! We are adapting it to fit our large family with not so much space. I plan on posting pictures and explaining the ways we will be using this system for my younger guys and my high school girls. I am pretty excited at getting started and so are the kids...believe it or not!!

I also wanted to set up my files a little better. I have always liked Dawns crate file system and so decided to set one up for myself. Instead of explaining it all here go over to Dawns and read the post to learn more. Basically there is one folder for each week of the year. So it is a weekly planning system....which I love and have always done. On the front of each folder I stapled a sheet for that week....a to do list, plans for that week, dinner menus......whatever I want to remember for that week. Dawn just put a lined piece of paper but of course I went into photoshop and created my weekly list sheet which I will gladly share with you if you would like it. I put some flowers on it and just made it mine....I am going to see how I use it and I might end up tweaking it a little.

Here is the download link for my weekly file folder sheet that is pictured above. If you have any questions on it just ask.

I'll be back soon with pictures and a detailed account of how we are going to be using the workboxes in our home.

Blessings!