Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Make your own Homeschool Lesson Planner

I've created the perfect homeschool lesson planner!!!

Well...for me anyway.

I spent many an hour on the interwebs searching for a planner that I could use for all 4 boys. But there was none to be found (that I liked anyway). I debated for a while on The Well Planned Day, since it was cute and girly and seemed like it might work. But I didn't want to shell out the $25 for it since I was still trying to buy the boys curriculum. Money is quite scarce when your husband is a full time student and you have 4 kids!

So what to do? I decided to make one on my own. It just so happens that I have a very intelligent husband who can make/create/design just about anything...I guess you would call him a jack of all trades! I explained to him what I wanted and it took him about 2 hours to whip something up for me. He also took the time to create a title page for me with the family crest and our homeschool name and motto. 100 blogger points to anyone who knows what it says!

I got the pages I wanted to be included all printed up and put in order. I had read on a couple of other blogs that having papers bound was inexpensive so I ran over to Kinkos to see how much. It was less than $6!

Well I love a blog with pics so here you go!





I cannot find the link to this printable anymore. Here is something similar though.



Also created by my husband, to keep track of the electives we do with our local home school group every week.

I just noticed you can see my owl-ly pj pants in this pic! Lucky you!

Here they are! The awesome lesson planning pages my husband created! LSU colors of course : )

Mystery of History planning pages, found on the MOH Yahoo group page


Apologia Biology lesson plans, from Donna Young's website

Apologia General Science Lesson Plans, also from Donna Young

My off centered tabs from Post It

We are planning to start school on Monday if Tyler and Colby stay well and don't catch the stomach bug going around!!!



Saturday, August 4, 2012

Biggest Loser Competition


A couple of weeks ago I decided to see if there was any interest in creating a "Biggest Loser" competition here on campus. I figured if there was a reward, then I might be more motivated to actually lose the weight. Turns out there was lots of interest! 
 
I started researching the best way to organize everything, googling 'biggest loser groups" and seeing how others had done it. Here is what we came up with:
-team and individual winners
-weigh-ins every Monday at 8pm
-$10 per person- $5 for winner and $5 for winning team
-we would judge by percentage lost, not weight
-the competition would last 12 weeks

Here are a few "helps" I found. I will be taking optional measurements every 2 weeks and recording them on this Weight Loss Progress Chart. I was also very excited to find this "Biggest Loser Kit" Excel spreadsheet that will calculate the weight loss percentages for me!


At the last weigh in I was in the lead (woo-hoo!), but we still have 11 weeks to go! I have lost 9.5 pounds so far. My goal is to lose 35lbs total or to get to a size 8, whichever comes first!