The Plan

It's always nice to have a plan to laugh at later, isn't it?

I need to have a plan. I don't have to follow the plan, mind you, but there needs to be a plan. My wake-up-sweating-with-the-creepy-feeling-at-the-back-of-my-neck nightmare is having 6 kids look at me and say, "What do we do now?" and I DON"T KNOW! If that doesn't sound like that big a deal to you, the last time it happened, while I was floundering around trying to come up with something, the kids amiably went off and finger painted. With Crisco. On the floor. That was a while ago though.
Actually, it happenned not long after I figured out that I needed a way to organize my house since it didn't matter how many cool ideas I had for the kids if I couldn't find any of the things to do it with (or a flat surface). Having kids taught me organization the hard way!

This year we started planning with the cloud organizer I mentioned. We put the kid's name in the center and circled it. Coming out from that central circle were spokes for each area in the kids life: exercise, social skills, spiritual growth, math, anything that came to mind. These spokes had more circles listing goals in each area and these had more circles sprouting off for how we hoped to meet those goals. I've since come across this mapping technique (the picture) which I think could be useful.

Anyway, I now had a list of what I wanted to do. I also had a table I made on Word that is just a weekly schedule divided by half hour. I know that our family likes to be able to mix things up. I also know we are better at book work in the morning and that we get tired as we go along the week. It looks more structured than it is. We will switch around days as needed, and when we are on a roll with one thing, I'll ditch the rest of the schedule. Science and History take variable amounts of time in the afternoon, and we will actually skip them when friends stop by.

Things in italics mean that they are every other week (we do go to Mass each Sunday, but the time varies!). PT is prayer time, BT is Bible Time. Ldry is laundry! Office is the Liturgy of the Hours. I couldn't get the document to transfer so I ended up taking a picture of it (click to enlarge).