Lesson planning that survives a sick week

The plan that gets you in trouble is the one that assumes a perfect week. Perfect weeks are not the norm — sick kids, a car in the shop, a grandparent in the hospital, and a Tuesday where nobody cooperated are the norm. If your plan only works when everything works, it will become a source of shame rather than a tool.

Plan by week, not by day

Daily plans break the first time reality shows up. Weekly plans absorb it. Write down what must happen this week, not what must happen Wednesday at ten.

Then build in slack on purpose. Four teaching days of work for a five-day week. If the week is good, you get ahead. If it's not, you're still fine — and the plan didn't lie to you.

The two-tier plan

For every subject, write two lines:

• Must do: the one or two things that genuinely cannot slide. Usually math and one page of writing.
• Would love to do: everything else — read-alouds, nature journal, the science experiment, extra history.

On a hard week you run the must-do list only and the week still counts. On a good week you get to the second line. Nothing was ever 'supposed to happen,' so nothing was ever missed.

Keep a bin for the hard days

Prep a box you can grab when you have nothing left in you: a chapter book you're already reading aloud, a multiplication deck, a copywork sheet, a library book on a subject they love, a documentary. On a bad day, pull from the bin, do the short version, and call it school. It is school.

What I'd stop doing

• Planning eight subjects for a six-year-old. Choose two or three and let the rest be life.
• Copying a full curriculum's daily page into your own plan. If the book already tells you, don't rewrite it.
• Scheduling every fifteen minutes. Children don't need a timetable; they need to know what comes next.

A good plan is judged by how it behaves in a bad week, not by how pretty it looks on a good one.