Summer
has flown by and we are almost ready for a brand new school year. Tomorrow will
be our annual Homeschool Planning
Meeting. We have some pretty neat stuff to plan for. The Homeschooled Young Man has
some thinking to do, we ask that he bring his ideas to the table in writing (by doing this he gets to practice real life skills in handwriting, spelling, critical thinking, organization, time management, goal setting skills).
Things that I have on the agenda...of course they won't be hammered out in stone because it's just July and we don't follow the public school schedule, so we are good. But I like to get something penciled in, so I can be on the prowl for good deals on our homeschooling materials.
1. What will be our core courses?
2. What will we use for those core
courses?
3. What extras will we add in to
round it all out?
4. What will be done as full year
courses and what will be done as semester courses?
5. Field trip ideas?
6. Will we attend homeschool
convention next year?
7. What life/social skills
will we work on this year?
8. What volunteering will we be
involved in?
9. What career training/skills/shadowing will he be involved in?
10. Will he be a part of
TeenPact.org again this year?
11. What classes outside the home
will he take?
12. What are some things that he
would like to learn?
13. What sort of employment will he
take part in?
14. What 4-H projects will work together with our schooling this year? (the 4-H Health Sciences can be used for Health class, the Cooking 101 project can be used for Home Ec credit etc. Homeschoolers are always thinking outside the box with real life skills.
15. What scholarships will he
be applying for?
16. Will there be standardized
testing this year? Stanford 10? SAT? ACT? ASVAB?
17. What colleges will we visit?
18. What materials do we have on
hand that we can use instead of buying more stuff.
19. What church related activities
will we take part in?
20. What worked and did not work
last school year?
I am sure that more will come up as
we chat around the kitchen table. However, this is what homeschooling is all
about. Yes, some homeschoolers have a set of state standards that
they must abide by, but there is so much more to homeschooling that those
standards. We as homeschoolers can focus on so much more right alongside schoolwork.
So many more rich life changing experiences that we can afford our children.
