Home school needs to be fun for Mom, or Dad if he’s the one doing the educating, as well as the children,  because, "If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy." I love special days, surprises, generosity and tradition, this is what our Home School revolves around and incorporates.

The Calendar

The very first thing that I do is my calendar. I print one out, using WordPerfect, and fill it in using different colored markers, one marker is church activities, another holidays such as Christmas, Columbus day etc. I mark the holidays that public schools take and circle every date that we are in school, so that I am sure that we are in session the legal amount of time

I include every Full Moon, when each season begins, daylight savings and all family birthdays. I include all designated holidays ie. September: Save the Tiger Month, Rice Month and Library sign-up card month. I find most of this stuff in Copy Cat Magazine and they also have additional fun days like Daniel Burnham’s birthday, he basically invented the skyscraper. I include this stuff because it gives me ideas for school and provides me with learning opportunities, enrichment possibilities. Daniel Burnham’s birthday would be a good day to try and build a tower out of a deck of playing cards, play ‘Jenga’, go on a field trip to the tallest building in your area, or build a Lego tower using every piece of Lego your family owns.

One of our family’s traditions is the "12 days of Christmas", Day 1 falls on December 13 and I enter each consecutive day in on the calendar so that it is planned on, "Christmas" falls on the 25^th of each month and this is entered on the calendar as well. Our "Traditions" site goes into this in more detail.

I enter Service projects planned, and as I go along and ideas occur to me, I jot them down so that I can remember. Even our Irrigation times are listed so that I don’t plan a field trip or some other inappropriate event on that day.

I use a Palm Pilot, and so after I have entered all the data into my paper calendar I enter it into my Palm Pilot, or into the computer version and then I sync them. I can then also keep a schedule of studies in my Palm Pilot and as I find additional material that would help in a particular area, I note it so that I don’t forget what it was. For instance, if we were studying skyscrapers and I saw a book on my son’s bookshelf on the cross-section of an elevator, I would write it down to use when we studied skyscrapers. This also helps me to use the resources I have around the house a little better.