The Start of Something New

Fall marks the beginning of a new chapter for our family, with a big change for me personally--I'm starting homeschool with our oldest child!  We'll be doing an hour or two of preschool each day.  It's informal at this point with no reporting to do to the school district, but I am treating it as "serious business" in every other way.  I'm planning to stretch preschool out over two years, as our girly won't be 6 until December 2012 and we are also working hard to bring her speech up to speed with therapy multiple times each week.  This week, one of the last of summer before school begins, I'm knee deep in lesson planning.  I'm blocking out some long-term goals and deciding on units of study for the next two years as well as doing more detailed week-by-week planning for September through December, at which point I'll reevaluate and plan the next few months out over Christmas break.  As much as I love the computer, there's something to be said about a nice pen and a pad of paper when it comes to lesson planning.  Our dining room table is spread over with all the books and resources I've acquired for school, in the middle of which is a small notebook with the planning I've done so far.  I wanted to pass along a site with some free down-loadable templates I've found helpful while planning: LessonPlans4Teachers.  There are some nice, simple templates available here perfect for what I'm doing.  They're providing just enough guidance for this novice!