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I learned a long time ago not to rely on electronic gizmos to hold all my life in one convenient place. I had a PDA type planner once upon a time and guess what? It bit the dust one afternoon and nothing could be retrieved. Probably did not help matters that it actually fell into a mud puddle but that is a whole other issue.
So instead of buying another PDA (they were very expensive back then and just did not have the funds to purchase another one) I just started using a small binder type planner that you could easily add pages to, take pages out and another cool feature - you could draw in the cover with markers and decorate it with stickers! (Okay, so maybe that isn't a real good selling point BUT it was something I did to make it MINE. I had gold and silver markers and later found some cool metallic rainbow shades and had swirls and flowers and such - everyone around KNEW that black binder with all the doodles was MINE!)
I kind of got used to writing my stuff down on paper, with ink...the "old fashioned way". I did not have to worry about batteries. I did not have to recharge it constantly. I did not have to think about the batteries being low and the power being out so I could use the binder ANYWHERE and ANYTIME!
It held my life. Addresses. Phone numbers. Birthdays. Anniversaries. What I was going to be doing eight weeks from next Friday.
Everything was in there except lesson plans and unit plans because those were all in the teacher planner that the schools provided for me at the beginning of every year. But that little binder did hold lesson and unit ideas I wanted to try, books I wanted to look at for the classroom, lists of items I wanted to check out on my next trip to the teaching supply store, etc.
But then I left the world of having a paid job and entered motherhood. There was no use for a planner planner in the sense that I had to schedule every moment of every day. I was simply at home and if I wanted to go uptown to buy shoes I would simply pack up Baby and go uptown and buy shoes. BUT I still used it to plot out certain things - gifts I wanted to make for people, baking for Christmas, renovations for the house, as well as keeping track of work hours for the employees (because Hubby did not always do it) and get togethers with friends where I would have to make sure Hubby was home rather than take Baby with me.
Well, Baby got older and became Squirt and started school (kindergarten) and I returned to work.
I started to rely more and more on my little binder once again. Work hours...Baby sitter hours...Date nights...Grocery lists and "pick up before going home" kind of stuff...Squirt's group things that I also had to plan for (like Beaver scouts) and all that kind of stuff.
Then we started homeschooling and the little binder was no longer big enough. I purchased a larger binder that could easily hold all my units, lessons, weekly and daily plans, curriculum outlines, books we were using, books I wanted to check out, books I wanted to order from the library, books I wanted to purchase from Amazon...AND it still held everything else about my daily life - my scheduled time to work on Hubby's books, Squirt's practices and lessons outside the home, wrap up parties for the season, Beaver plans, renovation schedule, my new gardening plan for the flower beds, web sites I wanted to check out that people have mentioned to me...EVERYTHING was once again written down on paper for me to quickly look up, and all in once convenient place in my binder.
But all that ended yesterday at approximately 8 pm.
Beavers ended at 7:30. The other leader and I talked for a bit while we cleaned up, regrouping our thoughts about how the meeting went and discussing next week's meeting (we are focusing on Earth Day, the 3 Rs and environmental issues over the next month) as well as trying to decide on a date for our year end and what we are going to do.
We stepped outside the scout hall and set the alarm and locked up while the kids ran around. She called her hubby to tell him they were done and we stood there talking until he arrived. While we were talking, I set my binder down. Not sure where. I think I just put it on the bumper of the truck. They left. We left.
Binder stayed.
I got home and realized when I got in that I didn't have my binder and I was going to look to see what I needed to print off for school today. No binder...Have no idea what pages we were working on and if I had already printed them off...
Heart starts to beat a little faster BUT I go to the truck to see if I just forgot it in the backseat.
Nothing.
I look inside, thinking maybe I just left it by the door when I hung up my coat.
Nothing.
Squirt is looking.
Hubby is looking.
I am looking.
We found nothing.
Hubby was a dear and got in the truck to retrace our steps home and he found nothing but it was already getting dark so he said he might just not have seen it.
I went back there this morning...
And I found it...
Ripped apart and papers strewn about from here to there and everything soaking wet and ink running everywhere and who knows what else.
One of the Beaver parents lives across the street from the hall and she saw us in the parking lot. She wandered over and mentioned that there were a group of teens hanging around the hall last night around 11 pm and she actually had to call the police because they were drunk and she suspected they were also using IV drugs because there were needles there earlier that the fire department came and cleaned up after she called them. They had spray painted a few houses in the area and broke some vehicle windows and then she noticed them at the scout hall and that is when the police arrived.
She said it was likely that they were the ones who completely ripped apart my binder - the cover was completely ripped from the hinges and paper ripped and tossed about all over.
She helped me clean up the mess but there was no way I could save anything that was written. Not that I would have wanted to. She had grabbed rubber gloves from her place so we could clean up the mess simply because we just aren't sure exactly what these kids had done to the stuff. And no, it wasn't the work of a dog...there were no teeth marks or paw prints on anything and given the mud situation, there would have been muddy paw prints on something.
So today, I am replanning...
Everything.
Squirt's marks that were recorded are gone - not that it really matters. The district does not require that we hand in marks, just a simple portfolio (even pictures will do) showing that he is actually learning at home rather than simply sitting there playing playstation all day (as the superintendent says). I had the marks more as a reminder for him - he likes being able to see "98%" or "A" written under spelling, or history, or grammar. He likes to see "Level U Completed" after a bunch of As and Bs. It was something I used to show him how far he's come and he loved it.
But the thing that upsets me the most is the hours of planning I had that I now have to do over again. Because we are schooling year round this year, I had planned everything up to June, and had not just an outline for all we are going to do in July, August and September - including outlines for unit plans I want to do with him when we are camping and out in nature every day - but had already began to "flesh things out" including where we would be in science by the end of September and where we would be in Canadian history and Saskatchewan history by the end of September.
And all my addresses are gone...telephone numbers...email addresses...birthdays and anniversaries...
And today I just feel lost because when the phone rang and it was a parent calling to invite Squirt to a birthday party on the 24th, I went to reach for my binder and...
It was not there...I had to honestly think about WHERE I was going to write this down even though we have a calendar hanging up on the kitchen wall with a pen right beside it! But I don't write those things on that calendar! I write them in my binder!!!
So this evening, I am going uptown and I am buying a new binder and some dividers. All day today I have been visiting Donna Young's site and printing things like crazy and planning if nothing else at least what we are going to do for the next week.
But would I change and do my plans strictly on the computer? No. I find I am better able to plan using pen and paper...just me...but then everyone is different. Having lost all this stuff before when my PDA went on me, I know it isn't any more reliable than pen and paper if you don't back up your information.
I will, tho, be scanning the important stuff and storing them on a disk just in case it happens again.
So instead of buying another PDA (they were very expensive back then and just did not have the funds to purchase another one) I just started using a small binder type planner that you could easily add pages to, take pages out and another cool feature - you could draw in the cover with markers and decorate it with stickers! (Okay, so maybe that isn't a real good selling point BUT it was something I did to make it MINE. I had gold and silver markers and later found some cool metallic rainbow shades and had swirls and flowers and such - everyone around KNEW that black binder with all the doodles was MINE!)
I kind of got used to writing my stuff down on paper, with ink...the "old fashioned way". I did not have to worry about batteries. I did not have to recharge it constantly. I did not have to think about the batteries being low and the power being out so I could use the binder ANYWHERE and ANYTIME!
It held my life. Addresses. Phone numbers. Birthdays. Anniversaries. What I was going to be doing eight weeks from next Friday.
Everything was in there except lesson plans and unit plans because those were all in the teacher planner that the schools provided for me at the beginning of every year. But that little binder did hold lesson and unit ideas I wanted to try, books I wanted to look at for the classroom, lists of items I wanted to check out on my next trip to the teaching supply store, etc.
But then I left the world of having a paid job and entered motherhood. There was no use for a planner planner in the sense that I had to schedule every moment of every day. I was simply at home and if I wanted to go uptown to buy shoes I would simply pack up Baby and go uptown and buy shoes. BUT I still used it to plot out certain things - gifts I wanted to make for people, baking for Christmas, renovations for the house, as well as keeping track of work hours for the employees (because Hubby did not always do it) and get togethers with friends where I would have to make sure Hubby was home rather than take Baby with me.
Well, Baby got older and became Squirt and started school (kindergarten) and I returned to work.
I started to rely more and more on my little binder once again. Work hours...Baby sitter hours...Date nights...Grocery lists and "pick up before going home" kind of stuff...Squirt's group things that I also had to plan for (like Beaver scouts) and all that kind of stuff.
Then we started homeschooling and the little binder was no longer big enough. I purchased a larger binder that could easily hold all my units, lessons, weekly and daily plans, curriculum outlines, books we were using, books I wanted to check out, books I wanted to order from the library, books I wanted to purchase from Amazon...AND it still held everything else about my daily life - my scheduled time to work on Hubby's books, Squirt's practices and lessons outside the home, wrap up parties for the season, Beaver plans, renovation schedule, my new gardening plan for the flower beds, web sites I wanted to check out that people have mentioned to me...EVERYTHING was once again written down on paper for me to quickly look up, and all in once convenient place in my binder.
But all that ended yesterday at approximately 8 pm.
Beavers ended at 7:30. The other leader and I talked for a bit while we cleaned up, regrouping our thoughts about how the meeting went and discussing next week's meeting (we are focusing on Earth Day, the 3 Rs and environmental issues over the next month) as well as trying to decide on a date for our year end and what we are going to do.
We stepped outside the scout hall and set the alarm and locked up while the kids ran around. She called her hubby to tell him they were done and we stood there talking until he arrived. While we were talking, I set my binder down. Not sure where. I think I just put it on the bumper of the truck. They left. We left.
Binder stayed.
I got home and realized when I got in that I didn't have my binder and I was going to look to see what I needed to print off for school today. No binder...Have no idea what pages we were working on and if I had already printed them off...
Heart starts to beat a little faster BUT I go to the truck to see if I just forgot it in the backseat.
Nothing.
I look inside, thinking maybe I just left it by the door when I hung up my coat.
Nothing.
Squirt is looking.
Hubby is looking.
I am looking.
We found nothing.
Hubby was a dear and got in the truck to retrace our steps home and he found nothing but it was already getting dark so he said he might just not have seen it.
I went back there this morning...
And I found it...
Ripped apart and papers strewn about from here to there and everything soaking wet and ink running everywhere and who knows what else.
One of the Beaver parents lives across the street from the hall and she saw us in the parking lot. She wandered over and mentioned that there were a group of teens hanging around the hall last night around 11 pm and she actually had to call the police because they were drunk and she suspected they were also using IV drugs because there were needles there earlier that the fire department came and cleaned up after she called them. They had spray painted a few houses in the area and broke some vehicle windows and then she noticed them at the scout hall and that is when the police arrived.
She said it was likely that they were the ones who completely ripped apart my binder - the cover was completely ripped from the hinges and paper ripped and tossed about all over.
She helped me clean up the mess but there was no way I could save anything that was written. Not that I would have wanted to. She had grabbed rubber gloves from her place so we could clean up the mess simply because we just aren't sure exactly what these kids had done to the stuff. And no, it wasn't the work of a dog...there were no teeth marks or paw prints on anything and given the mud situation, there would have been muddy paw prints on something.
So today, I am replanning...
Everything.
Squirt's marks that were recorded are gone - not that it really matters. The district does not require that we hand in marks, just a simple portfolio (even pictures will do) showing that he is actually learning at home rather than simply sitting there playing playstation all day (as the superintendent says). I had the marks more as a reminder for him - he likes being able to see "98%" or "A" written under spelling, or history, or grammar. He likes to see "Level U Completed" after a bunch of As and Bs. It was something I used to show him how far he's come and he loved it.
But the thing that upsets me the most is the hours of planning I had that I now have to do over again. Because we are schooling year round this year, I had planned everything up to June, and had not just an outline for all we are going to do in July, August and September - including outlines for unit plans I want to do with him when we are camping and out in nature every day - but had already began to "flesh things out" including where we would be in science by the end of September and where we would be in Canadian history and Saskatchewan history by the end of September.
And all my addresses are gone...telephone numbers...email addresses...birthdays and anniversaries...
And today I just feel lost because when the phone rang and it was a parent calling to invite Squirt to a birthday party on the 24th, I went to reach for my binder and...
It was not there...I had to honestly think about WHERE I was going to write this down even though we have a calendar hanging up on the kitchen wall with a pen right beside it! But I don't write those things on that calendar! I write them in my binder!!!
So this evening, I am going uptown and I am buying a new binder and some dividers. All day today I have been visiting Donna Young's site and printing things like crazy and planning if nothing else at least what we are going to do for the next week.
But would I change and do my plans strictly on the computer? No. I find I am better able to plan using pen and paper...just me...but then everyone is different. Having lost all this stuff before when my PDA went on me, I know it isn't any more reliable than pen and paper if you don't back up your information.
I will, tho, be scanning the important stuff and storing them on a disk just in case it happens again.
Oh no. How devastating :(