Portable School Planning

Many days it's hard to get a lot of work done at home on beautiful summer days and I have to admit that the computer is often a distraction in itself (though it helps to turn the sound off so I don't hear from various parts of the house when an e-mail pops in). Today, I decided to pack up some of my lesson planning and such and head to the park with the kids. What fun!

I have a binder with a magnetic flap that was perfect for the job. Inside I had Michele's beautiful planner, an extra monthly calendar for co-op and group planning, plenty of blank paper, my catechism book list from Age Quod Agis and a quickly printed list of books from LibraryThing. I also brought a few books along for reference in planning.

We enjoyed three hours at the park this afternoon and this portable binder was fantastic. The flap doubled as a bookmark for when I put the whole thing on the ground to give the kids a push on the tire swing.

I've never before taken advantage of the export from LibraryThing. You can create an Excel file of all your books in no time at all. I just printed up a simplified list with author and title (I'm not very Excel savvy so I just scrunched some of the fields closed and limited my print area). Naturally, I didn't think to alphabetize them before I printed them up, but it was still really handy to be able to cruise through all my books quickly and check mark the ones I wanted to consider for use this year. Next I can plug through and create lists for each of the kids.

I still have a ways to go, but it was a great start. I'm very nearly ready to send out lists of books to purchase to those in our discussion group.