Monday, August 13, 2007

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.

2 comments:

Simple Faith and Life said...

I guess you're more Excel savvy than I am (no surprise), but I experimented and you can go to Library Thing to List View C and click on the printer, and get a pretty good list without exporting, too. Thanks for the idea of printing from Library Thing to have a list of books! Btw, I love your new picture. Liked the previous one too, but like the one with all the children walking together up the road.

arlawless said...

Love the new masthead, Alicia! It's perfect. :-)