Scheduling and Lesson Planning

I think I've finally settled on a lesson planning system that I like.

The Sonlight curriculum that we use is mostly planned out for us, but I like having an electronic copy to refer to as we work and for record keeping.  Sometimes I don't do everything that is planned and I often move things around.  For instance, the Mother Goose book is on the schedule for every day.  Jonathan seems to prefer reading everything for the week at once.  He's always asking for more if the reading is too short.

After experimenting with different options through the fall, I've found that I like using Google Calendar to do my lesson planning.  I schedule one week at a time right now.  I do this sometime at the end of the week before or on the weekend.  I put on all of the Sonlight stuff first.  We do most of the storybook readings in the afternoon at nap time.  Everything else we do in the mornings.  Sonlight has a lot of activity suggestions to go with the readings.  I pick and choose, modify, and add my own.  After scheduling Sonlight, I add in Spell to Write and Read, Saxon Math K, Pathway Readers/Workbooks, and any other activities.  Each morning, I open Google Calendar on my computer or phone and work from that lesson plan.  I add, move, and modify to show what we actually did that day.  The times are not always reflective of the actual time that we spent.  Sometimes I stretch things out or shrink them for ease of viewing.

I've not been tracking our evening reading.  Jonathan reads in the evenings with Josh before bed.  Josh reads a story and then Jonathan reads for about 15 minutes, give or take. The bedtime stories vary, but Josh is reading through a children's bible with him right now.  After that, Jonathan has been reading his Pathway readers but sometimes he'll choose a Dr. Seuss or other early reader book.

Edited: I now use a wonderful program called Scholaric. Take a look at why I love Scholaric.