21/22 School Year Plans

 I clicked publish on my last blog post, detailing our 20/21 school year plans, then I turned my head to answer a kid's question and by the time I turned my head back, it was time to write the 21/22 post. That's seriously how it feels. Yesterday we started the 20/21 school year, this morning we started our summer break and now tomorrow we start the 21/22 year. Sam's last year of elementary school, Henry's first year of Kindergarten. Sure. Ok. Fine. It's fine. I'm fine.

I probably say this every single year, but I'm feeling especially excited to start this year! I've put a lot of work into planning and reworking things. I like to sit down at some point, not long after we start summer break, and look back over our year to find the weak spots. Then while I'm getting our curriculum and book lists in order, I can put my focus on those weak spots and try some new things. This year our big changes are in history, art and music, organization, and scheduling. I'm feeling confident about the changes I've made and I'm really looking forward to getting started!

So this year Sam will be in 5th grade, Kate in 3rd, Henry in Kindergarten, and 2 little tag along sisters. We are still homeschooling using the Charlotte Mason method, which means formal lessons start at age 6. For Sam and Kate, with summer birthdays, that meant 1st grade. Henry won't be 6 until later in the fall, so this year is Kindergarten for him, but we will do a little more structure than we have for Kindergarten in the past. I'm not following any specific curriculum for him, just piecing a few things together, starting off easy, and increasing the amount of work he does as the year goes on. 

For Sam and Kate we are still mostly using Ambleside Online, though this year I have deviated from their schedule and book list more than I ever have in the past. The biggest thing I did was remove the main history spine they use and replaced it with some of our own things. For Kate it's a lot of smaller books instead of 1 and for Sam I chose to switch to Joy Hakim's History of US series. My main goal in tweaking the history choices is to make sure they're hearing from a variety of voices. Including indigenous and Black history is important to me because indigenous and Black history is American history. Sometimes history is uncomfortable to read. Often it's ugly. I don't want to whitewash over that. 

I've also chosen our own folk songs, hymns, artists, and composers. Ambleside has some great schedules for these subjects, and they aren't always only white men, but there were some artists that I really wanted us to cover this year and I just wanted some more control over the music, hoping the kids will connect a little more than they have in the past.

I'm organizing our school things a little differently this year too. I got plastic milk crates for their binders, math books, etc. We're going to keep those in the dining room, planning on doing most of our work in there this year. Julia is not content to play somewhere where she can't see me and/or the big kids. In the dining room she (and Anna if she wants, though she's better at independent play) can color or play with play doh or puzzles while I'm doing Kindergarten work with Henry or reading with Kate. Sam largely works independently now, but he has lots of quiet places to go to after going over things with me at the table. I also got us a big dry erase/bulletin board to hang in the dining room during school time. I thought it would be nice to be able to keep our art study displayed there all week, instead of only bringing it out while we're studying it. I will also keep our weekly schedule here, and write the date, plus our composer and artist with their dates of birth. I got us the coolest lazy susan caddy to make supplies like pencils and markers easy to access at the table. It makes my school supply loving little heart so very happy.

It's so cute and colorful!

The crates are here for now and I hate it. When we put the high chair away soon though, they'll have a more tucked away corner to live in.

This marketplace purchase last year is still amazing. All of our books are here.

In the cabinet of the big shelf I have all of our math manipulatives and all of the toddler/preschool fine motor games and activities that I've put together over the years. 

I've also solidified our schedules a little bit. I kept a lot of flexibility in some of our subjects we only do weekly before, and that was fine, but it made it too easy to skip things. Making a schedule doesn't mean I can't still be flexible, but I usually do better with a firmer plan. I also made daily and weekly schedules in page protectors inside Sam and Kate's binders, so they can check things off themselves as they go. I tried this for Sam last year, but put it up in his room at his desk. I really thought he'd utilize that quiet space every day, but he didn't do even 1 minute of school work up there last year, so the schedule went unused. This year it's right inside their binders, so it will be visible for them no matter where they do their work. I've kept our weekly reading schedules the same. Not going to fix what isn't broken. I sit down on Sundays and assign a day to each reading, based on what our week looks like.

This will go on our big bulletin board.

These are in my binder alongside the attendance and book logs we need to keep to comply with the PA homeschooling laws.

Kate's schedule in her binder

Sam's schedule in his binder

Last year, after our Bible, poetry readings, and memory work during breakfast, we split up to get dressed and do chores, then met up for Swedish Drill (I've talked a little about drill before, but it's basically structured Simon Says, gross motor skills to stretch their bodies and get the wiggles out, plus good listening practice). We followed drill with some folk tale or ancient history study all together. I really loved starting our day together like that last year, so I made some more intentional plans for group reading this year. I have 2 plans from Amber over at the Heritage Mom Blog, Melanated Tales we started and loved last year, so we'll finish that up this year. The little kids especially really loved the African folk tales. I also have Amazing Africa and we'll use that for a deep dive into the continent in the 2nd half of our year. We'll also use this time to read folk tales from other cultures and biographies of interesting people from history. I'll utilize the library heavily for this, but I have some already planned and ready to go.

We'll also continue to do nature study together (I cannot even fully express my love from Exploring Nature with Children, even 3 years in now). Sam and Kate will also be doing their own nature study using a guide from Blossom and Root to plant their own garden plot. I had planned to do this with Sam last year, but it just didn't happen. I purchased the curriculum as a pdf and actually had it printed by The Homeschool Printing Company this year and I think that will make me much more likely to actually use it.

The big 2 kids have their own geography to do, their own chapters to read, their own maps to fill, but we also do some geography all together. I love this beautiful Maps book we have. It has been out every day the past week that we've been watching the Olympics, learning the flags and locations of the countries we see competing. 

We'll continue our dabbling in French together. We've mostly just been learning words and short phrases here and there, reading a few French picture books. We'll continue with that and hopefully add in a little more later in the year.

We will also continue experimenting with handicrafts together. Last year finger knitting was a huge hit. I'd like us to do more watercolors and pastels this year. Sam has also been very into whittling and wants to try some bigger projects this year.

For 5th grade this year, Sam will be studying history from the end of the 18th century, up to the start of World War I. That's a wide span of history, but this won't be his first time through so we don't need to hit absolutely everything that happened. Hoping to give him a balanced, diverse picture of the main points. He will continue mapping and entering things into his book of centuries. Last year he ended up still using our big roll out history timeline, but this year I think he's ready to move onto his own book of centuries. All of his history readings, like his readings for all of his other subjects, will be narrated either orally or on paper

For Language Arts he has literature to read and narrate, copywork, cursive practice, journal writing, grammar, studied dictation, plus he will be doing 2 written narrations per week at the beginning of the year, hopefully working up to 3 per week.

For science, Sam will continue studying Physics and Engineering, moving into human anatomy by the end of the year. He started this curriculum from Blossom and Root last year, but we went through it slowly on purpose to make it last 2 years. He's really been enjoying this and I'm glad I embraced his personal learning style and preferences last year to deviate from Ambleside's science. This is such a good fit for him.

We are continuing with Horizons for Math, typing.com for typing (he really loved this last year!), and Getting Started With Latin. He only dipped a baby toe into Latin last year and we're feeling ready to get more into it this year. He also has drawing practice, piano practice, and weekly recitation. His crate is much more full that Kate's or Henry's. Our one binder system has worked great up until now, but last year his binder just about exploded, so this year he has a 5 subject notebook for written narrations. His binder will still have space for copywork, blank maps, math drill sheets, and blank paper for recording his science experiments and labs. Journaling is new for us this year. Everybody is excited about it so far because I let them get any notebook they wanted for it. Yes, even characters. If Mario and Luigi on the cover will get Sam excited about journal writing, I am here. for. it.

For 3rd grade, Kate is focusing on the 15th and 16th century. We're taking a new approach and using several different shorter books with pictures. I think this is going to be a good fit for Kate and it's going to help us read a wider variety of perspectives from this time. She will continue narrating orally only, mapping, and recording events on our big roll out timeline.

Kate's Language Arts will be reading and narrating literature, copywork, cursive work, and journaling. Kate is reading really well these days, so a big goal for her this year will be to start doing a few readings on her own. 

For science, in addition to our group nature study and her garden plot with Sam, Kate is studying animals and habitats. She'll also be using Drop of Water to do some fun kitchen experiments and learn some basic water science. She's excited about this because she remembers when Sam did the experiments.

Kate will also be using Horizons for math, we've been so happy with it so far. She will have weekly recitation, piano practice, and drawing practice as well. Her binder has space for copywork, blank maps, math drill sheets, and blank paper for making any extra notes or drawings for drawn narrations or geography lessons.

My Kindergarten plan for Henry is pretty simple. Phonics, math, some basic copywork, lots of nature study, tons of reading. He already knows how to write all of the letters and knows several of their sounds, so we are on our way to more regular copywork and early stages of reading. We'll start the year playing games to solidify all of the letter sounds before moving on to blends and starting to fill his word notebook and read some simple readers. I used Discover Reading with Kate and loved it so much. I am very excited to use it again with Henry. He's very excited too which is the most important thing for sure! I am going to focus on multicultural picture books for him this year, loosely using Beautiful Feet's Read Around the World program and our library. For the first half of the year we'll just read, but after Christmas I'm going to have him try orally narrating a couple times a week since he'll be 6. I'm excited because Kindergarten is exciting, but also because so far the hardest part of homeschooling has always been the kids who aren't actually doing school work. Henry starting school this year is one less non school kid to keep track of during school hours and that's no small milestone in this house!

So there we go! As always, I expect this to change and evolve quite a bit as the year goes on, but I feel confident and ready to start our year with these plans as they are. We are hoping to get some more field trips in, as safe as we can, this year. We've really missed them the last year and a half. We're getting back into extra curricular activities this year too. We are having a nice summer, but the thought of structure and planned activities and routines is so attractive to me right now! Can't wait to dive in to what will surely be another wonderful school year!

How We Homeschool Preschool

As a homeschooler, I answer a lot of questions from friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers in the grocery store. It's different than what most people are used to so there is naturally a lot of curiosity. And I love it. I love answering each and every question I'm asked. No matter who is asking or how many times I've answered the same question. I just love it. So, if you're somebody who has always had a question (or several) about homeschooling, ask me. I would be so happy to answer!

One question I get more often than most others, and this is probably just because this is sort of just my demographic right now, is, "How do you homeschool preschool?". Or, "What do you do with toddlers for school?". My answer has really evolved since Sam was 3 years old and I first started "homeschooling". Life has changed since then, but also my general homeschooling philosophy has changed a ton. It has happened bit by bit as I figured out what worked best for us, but it made a huge shift in the middle of last year when I was newly pregnant with Anna, feeling miserable, and way burnt out only doing Kindergarten. You can read more about that here, but basically I discovered and started researching a few styles of teaching that advocated for no formal learning before age 6. Already feeling stressed about mixing a 1st grade and pre-k year while also bringing home another baby, I took that and ran with it.

So, the short answer to, "How do you homsechool preschool?" is simply, "We don't." There are, however, plenty of things that I do intentionally do for the good of all my children really that could probably, for lack of a better term, be called our preschool "curriculum".

Quality children's literature.
We own tons of kids picture books and also try to get to the library at least once a month. Since discovering Charlotte Mason, I'm more careful about the quality of the books that we buy or check out of the library. I've heard other Charlotte Mason homeschoolers compare books to junk food or healthy food. Junk is fine in moderation, as long as you're maintaining a healthy diet otherwise. For our "healthy" books I look for beautiful illustrations, and good vocabulary. If I've learned nothing else from doing Charlotte Mason homeschooling this year, it's that children are far more capable of understanding a much wider vocabulary than we give them credit for. You can't go wrong with classics from authors like Robert McCloskey, Eric Carle, Jan Brett, and Ezra Jack Keats.

Outside time.
Some days this is harder than others, but we do our best. Sam and Kate are old enough at 6 and 4 to go out in the backyard by themselves, as long as they stay where I can easily see them out the back windows and stay out of the cornfields and front yard (we live on a back road, which means there are plenty of people who go flying by, well over the speed limit, so no front yard playing for us). That makes it easier because I can't always be outside, but I do make an effort to get Henry and Anna out there as much as I can too. Walks outside are good for everybody and provide endless learning opportunities for preschoolers (and everybody else!) We have nature journals and some field guides, and Sam does a little bit more of a structured nature study, but for preschool Kate is just exploring and I answer her questions if she has any.

Cooking and baking.
Again, endless learning opportunities without having to do anything special at all. I don't make baking a "lesson" at all, everybody just pulls a chair up to the counter and takes turns adding ingredients. They end up learning to count, seeing kind of how fractions work, learning what sorts of things need to work together to make food, what happens to certain things when they get hot or cold (like how water can boil and turn to steam or it can freeze and turn to ice). I have to cook anyway, why not let them help and learn without actually doing any planning or lessons right?

Music.
Our first grade curriculum includes monthly folk songs and hymns as well as composer studies. The little ones listen along to those and I also play a variety of music all throughout our days. Again, no lesson planning, but sometimes Kate has questions and I answer them. "This sounds different than the other one, why?" "Well the last one was a string quartet and this one is a piano solo." "What does quartet mean?" "4" "Okay." Just by playing a ton of music every day (a habit I started back when Sam was a toddler) I've noticed that Kate has a really good ear for music and picks up the emotions in different pieces. When she was 2 I was playing Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and she said, "Mama, dis so sad." Sam is more likely to notice the volume of a particular piece and likes to pick out different instruments. Henry is already really good at catching the rhythm of whatever we're listening to and clapping or dancing fairly close to on beat. I love seeing all of the different ways they all hear and react to music! We also sing a lot of your usual preschool songs (and everybody really loves the 'days of the week' song!), but, in keeping with Charlotte Mason's philosophy, we really focus on quality! I think music is so important in any school at any age, but besides that, its very helpful at 'that' time of day before dinner and bedtime. I can have a little control over everybody's moods (mine included!) with the music I choose to play.

Art.
Sam has a scheduled picture study and Kate and Henry both like to look at whatever he's studying with him and play along when I cover it up and ask him to tell me what he remembers from it, but I don't make them. Sometimes they're not interested and obviously that's fine, since it's 1st grade work. I also don't plan or prep many crafts ahead of time for them. Drawing materials are always available and everybody is encouraged to use them. No formal drawing instruction or anything though. That, again, will start in first grade. Kate taught herself to draw flowers recently though copying out of a book about flowers that we have. I'm getting ready to teach Sam how to finger knit and I know that's something a 4 year old can easily do as well, so that will be a lesson where I will intentionally include Kate. Other handicrafts Sam has done, like yarn wrapped sticks and watercolors, Kate participates in if she wants to. She has her own pair of scissors that she is allowed to get out of the closet if she asks first, but I don't do planned "scissor skill" work or anything like that. Same with glue sticks, they're available (if they ask permission first) and they can glue whatever kind of creation they want to. So those are skills Kate has picked up on her own.

Life skills.
I think at the preschool age, it's just as important to teach life skills as it is to teach the alphabet. Sweeping, sink cleaning, vegetable and fruit washing, bed making, sock matching, drink pouring, snack making, and all things of that nature. This is all a little more in line with Maria Montessori than Charlotte Mason, although Ms. Mason was also an advocate for small children being able to do things for themselves. We don't do these things as lessons, I just make sure Kate learns the correct way to do them when they come up in life. Making her bed and cleaning the downstairs bathroom sink are her morning chores and she's getting pretty good at folding her extra blankets to lay at the foot of her bed!


In addition to all of these things that just happen in our daily life, I do have a few things put together that I can grab when Kate or Henry just have to do schoolwork like Sam. Or just when I need to occupy Henry long enough and quietly enough to get something accomplished with Sam. I have a bin of various beads, stones, beans, pom poms, pipe cleaners, etc and also a bin of little tongs, scoops, bowls, and cups. They can string beads on pipe cleaners, sort pom poms (or beads or beans or coins) by color or number into bowls or a muffin tin, pick up little things from one bowl with tongs and transfer them to another, all sorts of different little activities working their fine motor skills and keeping them fairly quiet. I cut up a bunch of cardboard rectangles and used glitter glue to write out the alphabet on them. They're fun (and pretty!) to play with and running their fingers over the bumpy, glittery letters is a pre-writing activity. Last year Kate had some matching games with laminated strips of paper and clothespins, but we haven't really gotten those out much this year. When Kate really wants to do school, we can do a ton with just one alphabet puzzle. She sings the ABCs, counts the letters, sorts them by color, traces them all with her finger, whatever she wants to do that satisfies her need to 'do school' that day. She also has a binder with laminated worksheets that she can work on with a dry erase marker, but we haven't used it in a couple months.

Something Charlotte Mason talks about a lot when she's discussing the 'early years' in her books is habit training. In most Charlotte Mason circles, when anybody asks what to do with the under 6 crowd, habit training, good books, and outside time are the top 3 answers. Habit training like attentiveness, obedience, orderliness, things you want your kids to know anyway, but you are just a little more intentional with it. For the habit of obedience we play red light green light or simon says. There are lots of ways to work on these habits through play (or schoolwork with older kids) and then they carry over into regular life as well.

So if the short answer to, "How do you homeschool preschool?" is, "We don't." the long answer would probably be that we don't really plan anything structured, but we make sure that the tools for good preschool learning are readily available. In addition to all of the things I've already talked about, we try to keep our playroom pretty 'open ended' (meaning little to no battery operated stuff) and our screen time minimal. I like to think that I'm giving Kate the tools to learn everything a preschooler should really be expected to know, and then letting her decide how and when to use them.

Every child learns differently. What works for one might not work at all for another, but this hands off approach can easily be tailored to different needs. Kate is not an especially self motivated learner. A big reason that we did attempt a more structured preschool with Sam was that he wanted to know all of the things and he wanted to know them immediately. I can see now though that he learned more and better when we stepped back from the structure and let him have more free reign. Even not being a very self motivated learned Kate has, in her own time, learned so much so far this school year. I was so nervous to be so hands off with her because she does tend to need more direction, but oh my goodness. She's flourishing! She is surprising me every day with things she is suddenly aware of and able to do. She learns at a very different pace than Sam, and different things click more easily for her than for him, but she's getting it all. Giving her the tools and the space to explore is giving her everything she needs. Today, for the first time, she got a piece of paper and copied the whole alphabet from our puzzle while I was doing a history reading with Sam. I was so proud and so relieved! It's hard to let go of your kids sometimes and let them figure things out on their own. That applies to schoolwork and a whole list of other things that I'm sure we're only in the extreme early stages of experiencing!

Preschoolers are amazing. And they are capable of so much more than we often give them credit for. They just need the space to do it!

I hope this post has answered some questions that I know many people have about homeschooling little ones and, like I said in the beginning of this post, I love homeschooling questions so please friends, never hesitate to ask!

Setting Up My Bullet Journal

Sometime in the fall of 2016 I stumbled across a few 'bullet journaling' pins on Pinterest. As somebody who loves order and organization, but also likes a fair amount of flexibility, bullet journaling almost seemed to good to be true. But it also looked way too intriguing to pass up!

A Bullet Journal is basically a customized planner that you create yourself in a blank notebook. Ryder Carroll, a digital product designer from NY, first developed the bullet journaling system, but it has evolved and changed as people have adopted it and made it their own. (Read more about the original system here) The beauty of bullet journaling is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, it can change to fit your needs month to month or even day to day. Scrolling through bullet journaling pins on Pinterest or #bulletjournal on Instagram can be incredibly overwhelming, but when you remember that the main point of a bullet journal is to turn a blank notebook into whatever you need, it suddenly doesn't seem so bad!

I've shared some photos of my bullet journal "spreads" on social media and everybody always seems to want to know more! So I thought I'd show what setting up my bullet journal for 2018 looked like. Other comments I often get are that it looks like too much work, or that the blank pages are just too daunting for a perfectionist. The daunting pages? YES. I get that. I totally get that. I've been doing this bullet journaling thing for close to a year and a half now and blank pages still make me so nervous! But it's actually helping me honor the perfectionist in me, while also relaxing my standards a little bit. As far as it being a lot of work, it is a fair amount of work. It's work that I don't mind though, and I don't think it's quite as much work as it might seem. To hurry things along each month, I've made templates of my most used layouts, so I can just quickly trace them without having to measure them out again every time. And months that I am just incredibly busy and don't have a weekend naptime to devote to making that month's pages (that's all it takes), I super simplify my pages so they only take a few minutes to put together. The initial set up is probably the most work because I have a few trackers set up to track things that I do all year long. But those are done now! Those trackers are all set up for the whole year. If you have been intrigued by bullet journals before, but have been nervous about messing up or not having enough time, I encourage you to just try a few pages in any old notebook you have laying around! It might not be the right system for you, but you also might find just the kind of planner you've been needing (and gain a fun hobby too!)

So we'll start with your tools. When I first decided to try bullet journaling, I used a blank notebook I just happened to have laying around, and a plain pen. That's it. I didn't want to get too fancy until I knew it was going to work for me. After a few months of that, I knew I wanted to keep it going, so I splurged for a Leuchtturm notebook with dotted pages. I knew I wanted either dotted or grid pages, to make it easier to make little boxes and whatnot, and the dotted pages looked cleaner to me. I chose the Leuchtturm over other dotted page journals because it has an index and numbered pages already. I also got a set of Stabilo colored pens. But please, let me make this very clear, you do not need fancy pens or notebooks to bullet journal! A $1 spiral notebook from the drugstore and any pen you have lying around works just as well. I feel like I need to emphasize this because I initially got very caught up in having the "right" tools to do this, but while I'm very happy with my fancy-ish notebook and pens, I was just as happy with my drugstore notebook and Bic pen! It's also helpful to have a ruler or something similar to help make straight edges.

You can see my templates on the right of this photo. Super helpful once you've found layouts you like!

When I'm ready to set up a new bullet journal, I like to first make a list of what I need. I've tried daily pages before, but it was too much prep work for me, so I personally need a monthly calendar page and then weekly planner pages. I also do monthly meal planning (more about that here!) so I need a place to write all of that down. I follow a cleaning schedule and like having a way to track that, bill tracker, monthly budgets. Basically I just make a list of everything I want to track and keep in the same place. Then I scroll through Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration. Using some ideas I find and some of my own creativity based on my personal needs, I draw up some rough drafts to see if what's in my head translates to paper. This year I had some pages at the end of 2017's journal to sketch and plan in, but the previous year I just used scrap paper.

Once I have a good idea of what I need, I group them into yearly and monthly. I put all of the trackers that cover the whole year in the beginning of my journal, and then after that I group the monthly pages together and just do one month at a time. These are my yearly and monthly "collections". The first page I do is the key. Mine is loosely based off of the original bullet journaling approach that I referenced earlier in this post.

Something that I'm changing up this year is actually utilizing the index and numbered pages. I didn't keep up with that last year and I really wished I had!

I like my very first page, before any trackers or lists, to be the 'theme word' that I've chosen for the year. I came across this idea last year, choosing a theme word rather than making a lot of resolutions, and I've been a big fan! This year's word is 'joy'.

Then I get all of my trackers that cover the whole year, as well as a copy of my cleaning schedule. The cleaning schedule is just for reference, I use a tracker in my monthly collections to actually keep track of what is getting done. Covering the whole year I have monthly habits, bill tracking, birthdays, and a "year at a glance" calendar for reference. I also like to keep a running "waiting on" page to track what packages I have coming in (especially helpful around Christmas time!!) This year I put that in with the yearly collections, but I'll likely need a new one later on that I'll put wherever I am at that point.

2 Thursdays? Hmmm. Mistakes happen. That's what white out is for right? Although, to be honest, I haven't fixed this yet. I'm learning to let some things slide 😛

After my yearly collection was in, I went ahead and did my January collection. Monthly I do a cleaning tracker, daily habit tracker, budget, month calendar page, menu, grocery list for monthly shopping, and weekly spreads.

I think habit tracking might seem silly to some, but personally I am very motivated by things like this. I am more likely to run back upstairs to make my bed if I know I'll break a streak of neatly colored squares if I don't! I know I can't be alone in this. Right?!

We are Dave Ramsey groupies and this is the layout that works best for our income. Expenses are listed on the left and the dated columns are paydays. We assign every dollar of each paycheck to expenses.

This is not the grocery list I actually take shopping with me, but this is where I write out the ingredients I need for all of the dinners on the menu. I do the menu and list all at the same time while I have the cookbooks and recipe links in front of me. Then when I go to make my grocery list, this part is already done and I can just fill in what I need for our other meals and snacks.

My monthly spread is usually the same, but sometimes the left side changes up a bit depending on that month's needs. This current incarnation has been working for several months now.

My weekly spreads change often, but this is working for me right now. I fill in the top section with my tasks and appointments and use the bottom to journal a few lines about the day and write out at least one thing I'm grateful for.

This cleaning tracker is a new layout I'm trying. Jury is still out on this one. I think it might be too messy looking for me. 

So those are my main pages. At the end of each month I take a little time to put together the monthly collection for the next month. I promise it does not take long at all!! Each Sunday afternoon or evening I fill in my tasks and appointments for just that week. Big events I write in the monthly calendar and then put it on the weekly spread when that week rolls around. In between monthly collections, I put whatever I need. Some examples of other pages I do:

Packing lists for vacation

Planning pages/menus for parties

Notes for a book I'm reading or a speaker I hear at MOPS

A list of prayer requests to go over when I have some quiet time

A list of books I want to read and a list of books I've read (look for a blog post soon about a book challenge I'm super excited about doing this year!)

A tracking page for a workout plan that I'm following

Lists of areas to declutter

Big to do lists leading up to events (like Christmas)

Basically anything I need. Any list I need to make or anything I want to keep track of, goes in my bullet journal. Sometimes I make them really pretty with borders and little drawings, but sometimes it's just a list with nothing extra. The act of list making alone helps me calm my brain down when I have a lot going on, adding a little bit of doodling makes it even better! Sometimes after a particularly trying morning, I'll sit down with my journal after putting the kids down for naps/quiet time and I'll make a very random list or just doodle a page with scripture or even song lyrics. A lot of bullet journalers get into hand lettering and that's a goal of mine for this year! Writing and doodling is so soothing to me!

I hope this post has answered some questions (and I am more than happy to answer any more!) and I really hope it has presented bullet journaling as a very helpful and achievable thing to do! I know it seems like a lot. I know it seems like you couldn't possibly devote any time to something like this. I know it might even seem like a total waste! And for some people, it might be! Bullet journaling definitely isn't for everybody! But it is absolutely the right fit for me.