Planning a planning day

The schools here are on a week's half-term holiday, so today I'm swapping children with a friend whose two daughters match mine beautifully in both age and personality. Star is going to play with her friend F, and F's sister G is coming here to spend the day with Angel. Both pairs are very much on the same wavelength. Star and F's wavelength can be a little tiring as it tends to produce a lot of noise, mess and bugs (they have been on a bug collecting kick recently). I am getting the easy end of the deal with two sensible eleven year olds who will probably spend most of the day arranging each other's hair, dancing, chatting and giggling. While they chat and giggle, I'm planning to have a planning day.

I know from experience that if I don't have plans and schedules for our schoolwork prepared in advance everything rapidly dissolves into chaos. My plans and schedules are flexible, but I need to have a plan in place from which to deviate. With Little Cherub added into the mix next year, I'm trying to get as much of the planning done in advance as I can. I have pretty much decided what books we will be using and have most of them to hand. Today's job is to parcel them out into weekly schedules, which will doubtless be tweaked, flexed, and rescheduled numerous times once we actually start work on them. But hey! This is my idea of fun. I enjoy planning. Some ordered corner of my mind gets pleasure from admiring a completed schedule. So ... today will be a leisurely day curled up with the new laptop - yes, our new computer arrived! - planning and scheduling to my heart's content. As the weather looks good I may take a break to potter out into the garden and sit on the swing seat and read for a while. I may even have a burst of energy and try to finish planting the containers Star and I started last week. I'll certainly eat some chocolate. Other than that, I'm planning on planning.