To plan or not to plan...

...that is certainly the question running through the minds of most homeschool moms this time of year. What sort of plan do I need for the coming year? How much detail? Yearly? Quarterly? Weekly? Little color coded boxes? What do they need to study and how will I ever get it all in?

Honestly, the very idea of planning out the entire year gives me hives and sends me running for the iced coffee. Bet you didn't know iced coffee is a remedy for hives did you? Seriously, iced coffee is a remedy for everything...but I digress.

Given what was going on in our lives during the last school year, it is nothing short of God's amazing grace that we got any school done, but low and behold the kids actually learned. That, coupled with the fact that our oldest has hit the Jr. High mark makes me put a bit more (OK, a lot more) thought into this year's planning. Having been a teacher in the past, I can churn out lesson plans with the best of them. What I've learned through the years of homeschooling however is that traditional lesson plans don't work for us. Teaching in a regular classroom I never had to deal with an array of curriculum choices, multiple teaching levels, teething babies, potty training toddlers, laundry or phone calls. In homeschooling, my best laid plans often get laid to rest before ever seeing the light of day.

So what does that mean? Do we just fly by the seat of our pants every day and hope for the best? If you dropped in on us, you might think that's the case, but there is a method to our madness. I've spent the last few weeks coming up with goals for the kids and listing out each area we'll be working on. What you will not find is a planner with all the little color coded boxes neatly filled out for each student, each day. What happens if we only finish part of our work for one day...what happens to all those neat little boxes on the next day? Can you feel the stress level rising? There are not enough erasers in the world to keep our family running on that sort of schedule. It just won't work for us.

But we have a plan. Some days we'll probably not get it all done. Some days we just might get more done than I had planned. We'll pray over each day and go with the flow. It's all good.