The homeschool planner is just merely our lesson plans written out. I made copies of our lesson plans from the teachers manual, that way I can write in extra stuff we do and I can check off what we did accomplish. They are then divided by which child its for, so I have one for Elijah which is Exploring Countries and Cultures and then one for Noah which is his 1st grade work. I also have a yearly schedule printed up and that is where I keep track of our field trips and how many days we have done school. We are not required to keep this information in my state but I still like to have a record of how many days we have done school. I keep all of this in a 3 ring binder. Every Sunday night I get all our papers and things set out for the week and I look over lesson plans. I prefer to do this on Sunday night rather than say on Friday afternoon, because then come Monday morning it's still fresh in my mind of what we are doing for the week.
Our menu board is really simple! Its a small dry erase board that is hanging in our kitchen. I tried other "systems" and never stuck with them, they all seemed too complicated and all I really needed was something simple. I change it out every week. I grocery shop every two weeks, so I meal plan for two weeks at a time. I typically just plan for dinners. Breakfast in our house is either cereal, cereal bars, frozen pancakes/waffles, or Elijah likes to make himself oatmeal in the microwave. For lunches we will either do PB&J or deli meat sandwiches, hot dogs, spaghetti o's, or mac and cheese (I know super not healthy!! I am working on it!!). So when I grocery shop I just know to buy those types of things, along with items needed to make our dinners.
Chore charts are another thing that can be either super complicated or super simple. I have been everywhere on this scale, from boards that we changed out daily to boards that we changed out weekly, and now we are on a set chore schedule. My kids each have a list of items that are their responsibility and items that they are paid to do. For Elijah, age 10, his responsibilities include, making his bed, cleaning his room (including vacuuming), doing his own laundry (wash, dry, put away), taking out the trash in the kitchen, bathrooms, and our school room. His paid chores are vacuuming other rooms, cleaning the bathroom, and doing his brothers laundry (wash, dry and brought upstairs). Noah, age 7, his responsibilities include clean his bedroom, put his clothes away, feed the fish, dust, help load/unload the dishwasher. His chore list consists of doing his laundry, vacuuming, and cleaning the bathroom. For Zach, age 3, his list is pretty short, his responsibilities are set the table for dinner, put his clothes away, wipe the table after meals, and clean his room. At this point he doesn't get paid to do any chores. I just typed up these lists and Noah and Zach keep theirs on the fridge, Elijah has his hanging in his room. For their chores, they can choose to do them throughout the week to earn extra money, but every Friday they are required to do them.
Implementing these three things has drastically reduced the chaos in our week. The old saying of "Fail to plan, plan to fail" is very accurate!
