Homeschool Year Planning For 3rd Grade And Kindergarten

It’s the end of February and I have already begun my planning for the next homeschool year. My children will be heading into 3rd grade and kindergarten. We do formal lessons mostly year-round which means our 2023-2024 school year starts in July! You can read about why ultimately we made the decision to do year-round homeschooling in this article I shared a while back. 

I have been planning our school year months ahead because it gives me additional time to scour the book sales, and curriculum sales, and slowly and intentionally plan for the year ahead. There are many things I take into account when planning a new year, so planning early is just what works for me.  

First Things First

It’s been very beneficial for me to first take a look at how the previous year has gone. I call this my Review Reflections. I reflect on questions such as: 

“What areas or subjects were their favorite/strengths?” 

“What were the areas or subjects that were their least favorite/weaknesses?” 

“Where could I have used better preparation as a teacher?”

“What method or schedule did we most abide in to stay on task?”

I also like to hear from my student (soon, two students). I ask her what she enjoyed the most, what her least favorite part of school time was, and what she’s looking forward to learning next year. I am also going to ask her to list 2-3 things she wants to get better at or learn for the first time. 

After my time in reflection, I begin to dive into my Homeschool Curriculum Planner!

I reprint this planner every year, which has become a simple yearly planning system as a homeschool teacher. I like to keep my curriculum/year planning separate from my actual homeschool planner as this just keeps my brain organized with the overview year planning. From time to time I also change my comprehensive homeschool planner layout (options I choose between are from my shop from the different collections) so as I prepare for a new school year, I am also thinking about how I will utilize my planner most efficiently.  

The next thing I do is print out the free 2023 and 2024 year in-a-glance printables and begin taking a bird’s eye view of how our academic year will look. I circle our start date, break weeks, end-of-term dates, and end of the year date. We have been following a sabbath schedule which means we school 6 weeks and then take a week off. The last couple of years it has only worked for the first and third terms, and during the second term we just break when it’s best for our family’s schedule such as around Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays (we are all Fall birthdays!). It changes from year to year, but I do feel more productive that we get through one full term before all the seasonal holidays.

Since I already know what our main curriculum will be for 3rd grade, all I need to do is look at the booklist for that year and begin slowly ordering them or finding them locally in thrift stores. Surprisingly I found several this year in local thrift stores and library sales saving me some money!

Next I select curriculum for subjects like math, phonics, foreign language and others. You can read about our 2023-2024 curriculum picks for third grade here. I’ve also written a blog sharing our 2023-2024 curriculum picks for kindergarten.

I like to roughly draft up *ideal* schedules for all the subjects we have and plan them out in a day. We have followed Charlotte Mason’s method of short lessons since 1st grade and we will continue to do so for 3rd grade. Lessons will range anywhere from 10-20 minutes. It’s also helpful for me to visually see where I can make time for my kindergartner (mainly time to explore math manipulatives together, read aloud to him, and guide him in writing which is simply beginning proper letter formation). I am in the process of transitioning from one to two students so scheduling the short, gentle/less structured lessons for my youngest is helping me strategize and prepare for what’s to come. I consider it habit training for both myself and my kindergartner. 

As curriculum and books roll in through the mail, I begin preparing my pre-reading “schedule” for my 3rd grader’s books. I started pre-reading the books for my oldest last year and it was one of the most helpful tools for a prepared school year as a teacher in my opinion. As I read through the literature, Bible, history, and geography selections, I took notes of names, events, and ideas and listed potential discussion questions to help me set my child up for a more successful narration and engagement with the lesson. 

I haven’t exactly worked out a schedule for pre-reading, but my goal is to finish term 1 reading selections before the beginning of June and then start term 2 pre-readings during term 1 (in July). This will probably change, but it’s my hope to stay ahead at least 6-12 weeks.

I also intend to include map questions related to our geography readings prior to the reading.

“Great attention is paid to map work; that is, before reading a lesson children have found the places mentioned in that lesson on a map and know where they are, relatively to other places, to given parallels, meridians. Then, bearing in mind that children do not generalise but must learn by particulars, they read and picture to themselves…”

–Charlotte Mason Vol6 pgs. 224-225

During the most recent ADE (A Delectable Education) virtual conference, they demonstrated a geography lesson that included a series of map questions at the beginning prior to reading from the geography reader. This sparked great inspiration but was also just very helpful on a practical level to see how something like that would work. I am quite excited to see how it goes but first things first, I need to put in the work and write up relevant map questions for our geography readings! 

Lastly, I am making a list of supplies we need to restock. Simple school things such as pencils, paper, paints and handicraft supplies but also keeping my eye out for little “extras” to go into their independent time baskets. Those resources will look like coloring books, worksheets for additional math or writing practice (think, scholastic workbooks or something), drawing, brain puzzles, word searches, legos, free reads, etc. If helpful, I may just add another blog article later sharing what we have in our independent baskets for 3rd grade and kindergarten. 

This is the general idea of how I’m planning our upcoming homeschool year! Got questions? Share it in the comments below, I’ll do my best to answer them!