Our homeschooling style is pretty laid-back.  My “scheduling” is pretty loose, too – I don’t make up firm “lesson plans” for every day; I just know to move on to the next thing.  For this reason, I don’t use a lesson plan book in the typical manner.  Instead, I use my “planner” more as a logbook.

I use the homeschool planner my mom designed for use with us more than 15 years ago.  (Actually, I use one I adapted from her design for our personal use; it includes Saturday and Sunday.)  Instead of writing down what we “should” do in it, ahead of time, I write down what we/Ariel did do.

This also helps me remember to record those things she does on her own that are educational.  With young children, this is most things!  Playing with unit blocks, for example, is a math activity.  The blocks teach spatial skills, fractions, etc.  Setting the table is a “life skill.”  Dancing or playing outside is “P.E.”  Playing with a map puzzle is geography.  Listening to Mom read a story is literature.

I have been taking pictures of Ariel’s big projects and putting them up on her website for her grandparents to see, and I think I will gather them all up at the end of the year, copy them to a CD, and put the CD in a sticky sleeve inside her learning log.  That should give us a pretty comprehensive record of what she’s done for the year.