Everyone starts off their planning with a Venn Diagram, right?!
I’ve been doing bits here and there but planning starts in earnest tomorrow. As you can see from this chart, I’ve got a lot to plan!
The girls don’t particularly like cross-curricula projects; they like to do subjects separately and a lot of them! They also like me to lead them rather than have external tutors/teachers (the bank balance isn’t complaining).
The girls’ interests are predictably diverging and becoming increasingly specialist so our subject list has got even longer. Whilst the list of things we do together has remained largely constant, the subjects they want to do separately is ever growing. But this is one of the reasons why we home educate: the girls can learn what they want to learn, when they want to learn it.
I do like a challenge but….I’m only one person. I’m starting to realise that we can’t do everything if it’s all dependent on me. Well, not if I want my sanity and enthusiasm to remain intact.
So this year, we’re going to dip in and out of more external courses and I’m going to encourage the girls to learn independently on some less core subjects with little input from me. I’ll always be fully involved in the GCSE subjects as I can only maximise my help in the revision phase if I know the content myself.
Dom is on computing, coding and German duties which helps massively as I have no knowledge or interest in these areas!
I’ve got planning meetings with both girls this week. I’ll take each of them out for lunch separately and we’ll talk through what they want to keep the same for 2023/24 and what they want to change. I find this helps me keep their thoughts and wishes at the forefront of my planning; I’m determined to keep as child led as possible.
So whilst I’m hoping my chart is complete, I suspect they’ll be more things to add after our lunch dates. But that’s okay. I want them to learn everything. But I need to be kind to myself and delegate some of it! Let’s see how I get on….
