** An Important Note – Fanfiction is extremely popular. If it’s a book, movie, TV show, celebrity, or anything else in pop culture – there’s probably a fanfiction work (fanfic) about it. Writers range from preteen to adult and the content of their writings range from G rated to Explicit. Many sites give authors the ability to give a rating to their works, but ratings are self-determined and not consistently applied. Depending on your students maturity and level of responsibility, you may want to restrict access or discuss appropriate reading and what to do if a story they’ve started isn’t what they expected.
Sharing your Work
kidfanfiction.pbworks.com – Contains material appropriate for K-6 students. Submissions and comments are emailed to the site administrator who moderates for violence, language and adult themes.
teenink.com – National magazine and website with submissions sole from teens. Has a fanfiction section as part of the overall fiction & novels section. Also accepts poetry, non-fiction and art work. Submissions may be printed in national magazine or featured on website. Allows comments on submissions. Stories, comments and forum posts are filtered for content.
fanfiction.net – Large repository of fanfics. Must be 13+ to create an account. Self rating system K (all ages) – M (Mature themes, older teens and up). Per guidelines, explicit content is not allowed. Ability to filter by content rating .
archiveofourown.org – Contains millions of works. Must be 13+ to create account. Self rating system General Audiences to Explicit. Many works are not rated and ratings are not consistently applied. Mature themes and sexual content common. Ability to filter by content rating.
Google Docs – If you want to share student stories only within a small group, Google docs could work. Enable sharing with specific files, or create a shared folder in Google Drive and all documents within the folder will be able to be viewed by authorized users.
More options for sharing with the world at large include publishing your own website on WordPress.com, creating a Tumblr.com account, or sharing on wattpad.com. Each has it’s own benefits and drawbacks.
So what’s up with the long hiatus from new posts? In short, Caregiving for elderly grandparents while maintaining even VERY part-time work from home and homeschooling is exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally. Leaving very little creative juice for creating amazing unit studies that challenge a now middle schooler and are worth posting about.
To take some of the load off we used online curriculum for the past two years – DiscoveryK12 (5th grade) and MobyMax.com (6th grade). Neither program was perfect but it didn’t require a lot of hand-on administration from me which made it ideal for our circumstances. Again, not much post worthy there. Academic progress was made, state requirements were fulfilled, and we made it through a couple of very hard years.
So here we are, entering 7th grade, mourning the loss of one grandparent while the other – who doesn’t require constant care – is still in need of daily assistance. We’re returning to more of a hands-on, offline schooling, primarily at my son’s request. More structured and with more textbook than our early grades but with more room for creativity and combining subjects into unit studies than online schooling allowed.
In some ways, the past couple years may have set us back a little academically. By third/fourth grade we were doing work that was in many ways beyond the “typical” grade level work. If we had continued on a more interest-led, deepening study of those subjects we might be even farther now than we are. But the past two and half years have given us so much more than book smarts. The opportunity for my son to really know his great-grandparents and have a close relationship with them is priceless. And the growth in the sense of personal responsibility and competency in so many real life situations is much more valuable. This perspective, as much as anything, keeping me from the endless “Am I doing enough?” questions that would make our homeschooling journey anything but stressless.
Going forward I hope to be able to blog about some interesting and share-worthy projects and lessons. We have some ambitious plans going forward and I’m exciting to be creating some resources for our own use that I think others may benefit from as well. My home school planner is already making my life easier. So stay tuned and if I disappear again for a while it’s probably just to deal with life as it comes.
I love the idea of planning everything out and being the most organized homeschool mom anyone has ever seen. In theory.
Real life… Not so much. We’re definitely more of a go-with-the-flow, have-a-goal-but-flexible-on-getting-there kind of family. While my now 12 year old thrives on structure, any deviation from “the plan” can result in an anxiety spiral. We’re working on it.
Meanwhile, what works fairly well for us is to have a general plan (cover x number of pages in x subject most weeks) and outline each week or two as we go. Since I couldn’t find a planning book or pages that fit our needs, I did what I usually do. I made my own.
These pages are extremely flexible. Some weeks I’ll want to plan lessons for specific days to fit a unit study or special activities. Those weeks I’ll use the sections to assign lessons for each day. Other weeks I don’t care if he works on one subject all day or in whatever order he chooses – as long as the week’s work gets done – so can list lessons by subject.
The checkmarks to the left of each lesson we use as “done” to quickly see the week’s progres. The right side checkmarks can be used to show which assignments I’ve checked over or to indicate that he needs help with an assignment.
The second page has plenty of room to list all the “extras” as they happen. Books read, videos watched, field trips, library visits, special projects, etc.
You can download these pages for free below – or – purchase on Amazon a 128 page softcover book that includes
yearly attendance calendar
2 year (July 2018 – June 2020) calendar pages with space to note important dates
12 year overview planning spaces for yearly overview planning
52 weeks of undated planning & record keeping pages
extra lined and dot grid pages for book lists, co-op schedules, unit study planning, notes, diagrams, or whatever you need
Free Planning Pages
Free weekly home school planning and record keeping pages
We used Disney’s Imagineering DVDs from our library to get ready for our trip. The 11-video series covers a ton of information in a fun, interactive way. It was funny listening to the kids as we went through the park, “Remember when Asa (the DVD host) did that?”
The series includes:
Energy
Fluids
Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion
Gravity
Friction
Magnetism
Electricity
Levers & Pulleys
Trajectory
Design & Models
Animal Adaptations: Communication
Each DVD includes instructions for a try-it-yourself, interactive activity to reinforce the science principles in the video!
I highly recommend incorporating this series into your pre-trip homeschooling! A science teacher has archived 5 of the videos on her YouTube channel (as of June 2026).
I found the entire series available at my local library. Some of the DVDs are also available on Amazon or Ebay.
Sometimes things just converge together and make planning a extras for the week nearly impossible. For me, that’s usually the same week I need the kids occupied so I can concentrate on other work deadlines. Last week was one of those weeks. While searching for something else I came across the Pack-N-Go Girls Mystery series and the related “extending the learning” packs on TeachersPayTeachers.com. With limited time and no plan in place I bought the Kindle version of the first Mexico book – Mystery of the Thief in the Night (Pack-n-Go Girls – Mexico Book 1) – and downloaded the free packs from TPT. I also added in some ancient civilizations videos & worksheets from BrainPop.com (Maya, Aztec, Inca, Columbian Exchange, Conquistadors) and our regular math and ELA / spelling schedule.
I don’t think this week’s lesson will win and awards but it was exactly what we needed to get a little something extra during the week and not fall behind. With additional books set in Mexico, Austria and Thailand and more free related learning packs on TPT if I ever need another no-prep week I’m glad to know they are there.
– and downloaded the