How could I resist this? I started to respond in a comment, but it got rather long, so I thought it better removed to a post.
There was a highly amusing thread on Brightkite as to what orgoplanning is – it’s a term that was coined by mazportico some years ago to describe the perceived difference between two types of home educators, the “orgo planners” and the “lazy buggers”. So it’s not only UK home ed, but peculiar to the blogring, and given that it’s a few years back, it was a much smaller ring then too.
Myself, I’m not so sure there’s that much of a difference a lot of the time. Few of us require our children to sit and learn at given times, although we might want some basic skills to be practised regularly. These are often described as “normals” following Merry’s practise. Then again, the children might decide to do this of their own accord anyway. Most of us follow our children’s interests and try to provide materials that might spark those interests to give us something to follow, whether we describe ourselves as planners or not.
Perhaps the main difference is the way orgo planners peruse websites searching for resources, books to enlighten, computer programs to titillate, the way they share catalogues, and plan buying excursions, share tips and loan materials out. Though I’m not sure that lazy buggers don’t gather stuff they think their children might enjoy too, maybe even the same stuff from time to time.
Having two children who’ve just come out of school, albeit an extremely child-centered, small school, my attempt at orgo planning is in response to the need that they both have for some sort of structure to their life. As I said in that earlier post Big likes to know what is coming next and always has done. If I’ve got a set of resources or some ideas, then I don’t have to respond in exhaustion as I so often have before, “I don’t know”. My plans will be loosely woven as I find too much structure restricting for myself, and if I plan too tightly I set myself up to fail, which will do none of us any good.
So far, I’ve thought of a body project, and we borrowed resources from Jan yesterday. Small sat in the middle of the floor last night and learnt about germs and bacteria (oh it was a good thing, him deciding he would read). We will draw diagrams and label them as he very much enjoys doing that, and Big will open her new cooking book and provide fuel for us to learn with. (Today she asked why we eat, and what would happen if we didn’t, what do they teach them at these schools? 😉 )
I cannot and will not defend our home educating style – we do what we have to to be happy in our lives. But I hope that this post goes someway to shedding light on the term orgo planning. It probably doesn’t, I’m a bit of an amateur really. But it’s as good as you’re going to get from me, and that will have to do.
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