How to Plan Your Homeschool Year

Are you completely overwhelmed at the idea of planning your homeschool year?  Are you stuck on where to start?  If so, you are not alone! Planning can definitely seem mind-boggling when you are thinking of how you will put it all together and make your year run like a well-oiled machine, but it CAN be done. Once it is, the year flows so much easier!  Take a deep breath, and ask God for clarity today and everyday. Keep this in your mind as you go: "We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps." Proverbs 16:9

When we first got started homeschooling, we were overwhelmed as well -- and we were TEACHERS! We didn't know where to start, how to make sure we fit it all in (and did we even need to fit it all in?!?), and how to lay out the week so we weren't getting burnt out.

We tried internet and Pinterest searches, combing homeschool forums, and trial and error. Eventually, we discovered that most times talking with God first and then other moms always helped get some answers.  

Sometimes our brains were just too tired to think about solutions!  We would meet up at the park and chat with other homeschooling moms about our needs, parameters, and kids' interests and they would provide solutions and ideas that we hadn't even though of.  Two heads are always better than one, right?  We want to help YOU get started, as well, so you can enjoy your year, too!

If you are reading this, we are assuming you have already chosen some of the materials you will use for the year.  Some families choose to use an all-inclusive box curriculum. If that is you, then your year is mostly already mapped out for you (which can be a blessing if you are just starting out!). 

However, if you are using a variety of sets, topics, books and ideas, then you will want to lay it all out visually before your year gets going. It took us a few years to figure out how to get better at this so that our studies did not run into summer break.  While we weren't ever concerned with finishing every single lesson in the book, we did want to make sure that if the content was important enough for us to choose, then it was important enough for us to schedule it and try to complete it.

While there are probably many ways to go about fitting all of pieces together, we are going to share some general steps that helped us. 

Basically, you start from the big picture (zoomed out) view and funnel down to an elaborated (zoomed in) view.  Here's what we mean:

Start with:

the year --> semesters --> quarters --> weeks --> days 

This process can seem like it is a bit time-consuming and redundant, but once you get yourself all mapped out, you are set for the year and you only need to tweak as you go.  You also will have several ways to view your year -- at a glance or as a detailed view.

Here are the steps involved and we are providing some visuals as well.  We are a paper to pen "writer-downers," as it helps us think. This could also be done completely virtual with an online document and with a virtual calendar.

Step 1 - Gather curriculum

Gather all of your main materials you want to use for the year.  We would gather all of our main curriculum books to start, but wait to get most literature books as the year progressed (from the library).  If you have multiple kids, decide on what will be common subjects you do together, and which ones you will have to do individually. 

Our kids are about 3-4 years apart, so we were able to do as a family History, Geography, Bible, Artist Study, Composer Study, Poetry/Folk Music/Hymns, Shakespeare, and Family Literature.  This sounds like a lot, but we never did all of it at once -- some years we skipped some!

Individually, our kids did their own English/Language Arts, Math, and sometimes Science.  If your kids are younger, and/or closer in age or ability, you can combine more.  COMBINE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN so you aren't teaching dozens of little individual lessons during the day.

Step 2 - Look for the "scope and sequence" or divide it yourself with the table of contents

Look through your curriculum books -- do they have a "scope and sequence" laid out at the beginning with the number of lessons they recommend you teach per week throughout the year?  If so, and if this is a book to be taught in it’s entirety, then you are golden. 

If your book doesn't have a scope & sequence, check for a table of contents.  You can use the table of contents to divide in half for semesters and half again for quarters. Divide it up so that it fits in your timeframe.

Most one-year curriculum books teach for 32-36 weeks in the school year. If you want to use unit studies instead of using curriculum books (like 9 weeks on a weather unit, or two weeks on dinosaurs, you can just think about how many units you would like to do in a 9-week period). 

Step 3 - Map out topics for quarters 

Use your table of contents or scope and sequence to actually map out the topics you will cover each 9 weeks.  You can look at these plans from a few years ago as a guide to help you. 

Every family is different, so your plan would look different.  In the sample, many subjects were done together, but if you see an "F" or "H" that is where the plans were individualized for my kids, "Forrest" and "Hayden."

Step 4 -  Write in holidays, special events, and days off

Once you have your topics planned out for the year, use a calendar to map out your school year. We used this double calendar to map out all of our breaks, club meeting, classes, appointments, field trips, holidays, etc. We wrote the week number of school next to each week so we could see where every 9 weeks would end.  

Step 5 - Write in lessons

Once we knew which days and weeks we were doing school, we printed an individual calendar for each of the kids.  We wrote in all of the holidays, meetings, field trips, etc. from Step 4 above.  Then we loosely added in their individual lessons they would be completing each week.  Now we had everything generally mapped out for the year.

Step 6 - Make daily lessons as you go for your kids

Once school started, we found it was easier to use the calendars in Step 5 to make a daily do-to list for our kids in the mornings.  Then they could check off what they completed.  That helped them keep track of what needed to be done, and helped us know what they had finished.  Some years we had to be very strict with our time and we would make a schedule we had to follow, and other years we would just jot down tasks they had to do in a spiral notebook.  There was never one "right" way!  The only "right" way was what worked, and even that can changed periodically during the year.

And that's it!! 😊 Once we started using this process, we could relax and not worry about what was coming up or how much was left to finish.  It probably seems a bit tedious and drawn out, but the process of taking all of the information and compiling it out into a plan was SO helpful for us.

The benefits for us were: 

• We could see a glimpse of our whole year in just a few moments.
• We could see what topics were coming up to prepare and gather materials, schedule books from the library, and plan activities (like fun snacks or projects).
• We could plan field trips based on things we would later be studying.
• We could align materials so things would make more sense (for instance, depending on the time period we were studying, we could try to align our music composer study, art appreciation, poetry, songs, movies, and literature so we would be studying all facets of the time period).
• We could see in a glance what we had studied during the quarter and what topics were left.  It helped us with pacing and stay on track.

Check out our "Step-by-Step Planning Guide" for more resources. If you are struggling to get a plan together for your year, we would love to help you!  You can join our community for weekly gatherings of curriculum and planning support. If you have comments or questions, feel free to contact us!    You can do this, Mama!