Lesson Planners

Ahhh, the joys of going back to school.

With the return of August and a new school year, my attention has turned to getting things ready for my new class (finally! I've been so unmotivated all summer!)

One things that has been on my mind lately is my lesson planner.

When I taught Kindergarten, I used these:
                             
I never filled up all the boxes in these...especially since I only taught 1 section (1/2 day)!

For the last two years, I've used this one:



The first year that I used it, all the boxes definitely filled up. My principal (and I've never had this before) was very critical of my plans and almost wanted everything written out.

Previously, I've recorded what we were doing-referencing things, books, activities. This principal wanted assessments at the end of each lesson, purpose of learning, etc. (I apologize if you have to do this-I never had to before this principal, so I was set in my planning ways. My problem with this was that not everyone on the staff was required to do this)

This year though, I definitely didn't use up all the boxes.  Most everything was laid out in the teacher editions, so I didn't see the need to rewrite everything. I definitely made notations of the important things I wanted to cover, and additional activities that weren't in the teacher editions.

So I felt a little like I was wasting my money-especially since it includes all the extra pages that I don't use.

I've been thinking a lot about making my own. (I saw a lot of pretty ones on TPT-but the money thing again, as well as might not having exactly what I'm looking for or the design ;).

Experiment time!

I've always had the long sideways planners and never a 'regular' size one. But as we've discovered, I don't fill up all those boxes.

After playing around a little the other night, I came up with this:

Here's a closer look at all that cuteness:

But I wasn't sure that it would fit my plans.

So I did the only logical thing before spending a ton more time making my planner.

I mock-planned a day to make sure everything would fit! (In reality, I probably overplanned/overexplained a bit-but I wanted to make sure it would work!)

I think it will work! :)

What do you use for a lesson planner?

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn