Organizing and Lesson Plans

I literally spent 10 hours in the school room yesterday. I don't have school on Fridays so I used that time to get lessons planned for the week. I taught Home Ec at the Christian Academy in the morning and at 1:00 pm I began work in the school room. I had to stop for an hour but then worked straight on through till almost midnight.

I made out new word walls, went through every child's books and carefully graded and made note of where they are and what each one has to work on, prepared extra practice sheets for those areas, nailed down a workable class schedule, sorted through the files, etc. Through it all I kept the copy machine cranking out duplicates of master copy's that I wanted to file and keep.

I had to make another trip to the homeschool store yesterday morning. My dear little Peter has to back up a few months in his reading. That third grade book was just too hard and he was starting to declare that he didn't like reading. After sitting for an hour and only making it to page 2 I knew we had to make a change. The poor little boy cried quietly into the couch cushions when I told him that I was changing his reading book. He was quick to note the 2 on the new book. It upsets me so that publishers do that! I wish there was a discreet way to tell the instructor what grade level it was without the big number on the book!

Thankfully the fist story in the new book was about a hurricane coming to the coast. There was a picture of a little boy throwing a huge roll of masking tape toward his father as the wind whipped the trees. It shows huge cracks in the window and Peter was instantly taken in by the plot. He came to me later and told me that he liked his reading book and that it's so much easier to read! Bless his heart!

Today I have to finish the lessons plans for one of the kids and make out a new word wall for him. I actually think at that point I am ready for the new week. Monday we start classes at the charter academy and the kids are all excited. We will be there all day on Wednesday and just for one hour Monday morning. It will help break up there day and I think after these past two weeks of study that we are ready for the charter classes to begin.

Peter is taking a writing class there and I'm interested in seeing how they teach it. Tink and Peter will both begin their orchestra lessons Monday morning. It will be Tinks third year of string orchestra and Peters first!

Well I must spend the morning cleaning the house. It got quite out of kilter yesterday with me holed away up in the school room all day!