Sunday 18 December 2011

Fail to plan and plan to fail (or some other b******s)

Of course, having an assignment deadline, and a house that desperately needs pre-christmas attention, I am focusing on home education instead.

I like to have plans this time of year, just as I like to start after Summer with a sort of 'Autumn plan' (years of schooling have instilled strange seasonal behaviours into my neural networks - like the desire to buy stationery in September). We never stick to these plans. They just give me some reassurance that we are organised and have direction. And they give me a damn good excuse to spend money on Amazon.

So my plans are...

To 'do' Story of the World Vol 1 with ds2 and dd. In my enthusiasm I have already written out a schedule for the first three months of 2012 with lists of weekly SOTW activities and possible outings...let's see if we get past the first fortnight, shall we?

Attempt the Intel Design and Discovery curriculum with ds1 and ds2. As always, when I discover a new resource on the internet, one that is free and comprehensive and hands-on I cannot resist. I give this one 3-4 weeks. That's if we get past 'design a new paperclip' without rolling eyes and groans. It could all fall at the first hurdle. If so that rainforest may have been pulped in vain.

Something Shakespearian or Tudorian (yeah, I know that's not a word). There's a Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum from summer 2012. It's a possible. Or I could just drag the kids to Stratford point at a few 'Ye Olde Barde livede here-e' and be done with it. But if we're doing ancient history with SOTW, then jumping into the Tudors might confuse things. But then again...do we EVER do anything in chronological order? Dinosaurs next then.

I downloaded this biochemistry module which we might start. Or we might not. We should, because I paid for it. But that's not always a good enough reason. I'm not sure how much it crosses over with Ellen McHenry's Carbon Chemistry. Perhaps we've already done too much chemistry and there will be mutiny among the troops. It'll be one of those 'suck it and see' things I think. Or a 'can I be bothered?' thing. Jury out.

And apart from that...

Er well of course my children will be knuckling down to their daily regime of hours of literacy and numeracy and latin and French, German, Spanish, Mandarin and Swahili, while studying for IGCSE's in performance arts and political history, and winning awards for essay writing, spelling, ice skating, dance and gymnastics. And then after breakfast...

5 comments:

Ruth said...

rofl - your plans sound like mine ;) In our case I fully expect it all to go t*ts up by the second week of January. That is, of course, if we even start by then.

Jennifer Williams said...

I get a strange urge to start anew in January too! Am resisting it this year as we are moving in Jan so hey why restart all the mandarin, swahili, astro physics and the like just to disrupt when we move?? So I'm going with some fab fossil stuff I found and that the kids like, oh and I might suggest they write some thank you notes!!!! he he, Jen x

Anne B said...

You're better than me. I have a core 2/3rds of plan and then we replan the other third every other month!

Mine know what they want to do, but we've had a small accident with Monster's geography so I've still got to replan. I left the book out and he was enjoying it! So now he's making me a nice list of things he'd like to learn about that have nothing to do with KS3 and we'll do that instead of the book which he's finished.

Big mamma frog said...

That makes me laugh Anne! I can't imagine mine taking to any books (particularly anything that might be deemed educational) I accidentally left out. That is, unless they contained rude jokes {g}

'By the way, Mum, I just read through that biochemistry curriculum you left on the sofa...' Now that's one thing I'll NEVER hear in my house lol.

Anne B said...

My spare resources live in the loft, behind the central heating tank, BMF. I learned my lesson the hard way when I found my planning was already irrelevant because they'd finished. The problem is that they get up early and work so sometimes I'm not sure what they're doing.


Like I say, autism is by no means all bad...