When I Begin My Yearly Homeschool Planning
Midway through our final term (each term is 12 weeks long, and we have 3 terms in total), I begin to look and plan ahead for the next homeschool year. This gives me ample time to thoughtfully, and prayerfully consider how to move forward in homeschooling. It also gives me time to search and find the best prices for any curriculum or books I’ll add to our home library. As requested, I decided to write a blog article sharing my steps for planning a new homeschool year. This is just what has worked for me, though there is not right or wrong way to homeschool plan.
1) Print My Curriculum Homeschool Planner
Every year I reprint my curriculum homeschool planner. I personally like to print additional booklist pages, and the blank idea note pages to add to my planner. Having a planner like this that I can print year after year keeps all my future curriculum, schedules, budget and book/material lists organized in one place.
2) Designate Time In My Calendar To New Year Homeschool Planning
This may seem like a no-brainer to some, but I found that I have to block out time in my week to specifically homeschool plan otherwise it gets put on the back burner. I personally plan to sit down 3-4x a week for this and I don’t remove the blocked time until it’s done. Times will greatly vary from family to family, so you’ll have to decide how much time is appropriate to invest into your own curriculum/yearly planning. I will say, the more years we homeschool, this process is starting to become less time consuming because we have found our core curriculum and education style. The researching of different curriculums and homeschool styles and then deciding what fits best for your family for the first time, in my opinion, felt like ages to plan and make decisions on.
Nonetheless, whether it’s your 1st year or 4th year of homeschooling, I look at this planning time as an investment into our homeschool, so that we can be set up and ready to start on our first day more smoothly. I have found the more that I can be prepared for our year, the more at peace our homeschool time is.
3) Pray Over Our New Homeschool Year, Vision Plan
In my Curriculum Homeschool Planner there is a sheet which you can write out your goals, vision and your ‘why’ for the new homeschooling year. This has been so helpful for me as I reflect and pray about the upcoming year. Choosing to homeschool is a big life commitment and every year I plan to carve time out to really ponder on if this is still the best for my children and family as a whole. It’s a great heart-check for me as the teacher, but really as a mother, remembering why I do what I do and writing those thoughts down. It’s also a time I reflect on my children’s progress in academics, habits, strengths, and weaknesses. I like to share this sheet with my husband once I am finished with it, and I also appreciate that this opens up dialogue to discuss his own ‘why’, goals and vision for our choice to homeschool.
4) Calendar Overview
I like to have the months I am planning to homeschool on a single sheet of paper so I get a “bird’s eye view” of our year. I simply pulled up my phone’s calendar, took a screen shot with the months I needed in view and then just printed it out. With this calendar, I note any future vacations planned, birthdays, weekly obligations and holidays. Once those are marked, I pencil in our school weeks, picking our start and end dates.
We have 36 weeks of school, which is split into 3 (12 week) terms. Within each term, I like to follow a 6 week on and 1 week off schedule. Because of our 6 week on, 1 week off schedule, we don’t do normal seasonal breaks as most traditional schools follow. I personally like this option better because this gives us more mini breaks spread throughout the year than just two bigger breaks. Most of our breaks also fall on days when local schools are in session so we have the parks, libraries and camp grounds to ourselves, mostly.
This year, Thanksgiving week actually falls on a break week for us during our second term. However, for the second half of our second term, we will be taking 2 weeks off for Christmas and New Years, then we will resume and finish the last 2 weeks of our second term and just move right into our final term.
Our 3rd and final term doesn’t follow the 6 weeks on, 1 week off schedule, but we do get in a couple breaks for our winter/spring season that work best with our personal schedules before taking off May and June. I love the flexibility of homeschool schedules, and as long as we complete our 36 weeks of school, we have so much freedom in when those weeks are actually completed.
5) Print AOY2 Schedule + Familiarize With Y2 Overview
Since I have already decided to continue using Ambleside Online for our core curriculum, I now just need to print the schedule listed on their website for the correct year we are heading into (AO Year 2). I familiarize myself with Ambleside Online’s booklist for Year 2, which books we already have, and which ones I need to buy or reserve from the library. I spend some time reading the daily and weekly work section as well as dissecting their footnotes section (scroll all the way to the bottom of the AOY2 page). If I have questions, I will simply just search the topic I am wondering about in their search bar on their website which they have always had a thorough page dedicated to the topics I am questioning. Their website has become much more user-friendly since I first started with AO, which I am grateful for! For additional help navigating AO schedules, book selections, and examples, I turn to the AO forum or FB page for help.
If I want to dive deeper in my questions or need further examples, I’ve found Instagram hashtags such as #amblesideonline and #aoy2 to be another fruitful resource to seeing some of the work in other homeschool family’s homes. I am sure you can do a hashtag search with any curriculum you choose to use and plenty will come up. I have even searched hashtags by subjects in general by using #homeschoolgeography or #charlottemasongeography.
6) Select Curriculum For Math, Handwriting, Foriegn Language And Others
While AO has most of our subjects covered, they recommend selecting your own curriculum for subjects like math, handwriting and foriegn language. I also take some time to look at resources for other subjects I might include into our school week like typing practice or additional geography resources. I will share our curriculum picks for second grade in a later blog article coming soon!
7) Make Booklists And Supply List
I categorize my booklist for the year by subject using the Curriculum Planner as I find that to be more helpful than one master booklist from another source since I like to customize my own booklists anyways. My booklist categories include geography, history, literature/tales, nature study, and free reads from AO’s schedule.
This year I’ve also added a list for a few books I’m looking to get for reading to my 3.5 year old and categorized it as “early years”. As books are getting ordered or reserved from the library, I check them off my list. I like taking my booklists with me when I am thrifting and sometimes I happen to come across them for much cheaper!
Supplies include mostly art supplies, pencils, notebooks and paper that I have to restock. If we’re trying a new handcraft for the term, I will be sure to buy only the upcoming term’s handcraft supplies so they are ready to go.
8) Budget
I won’t share my personal budget here, because this is going to vary from family to family. I do want to note that I try to buy second-hand, first and that’s often easier to do when I start my planning months in advance. It gives me time to shop around and maybe hit a sale or two for curriculum and books. I often look at Thriftbooks.com, Ebay, and local homeschool sell/buy groups for what I have on my curriculum and booklist sheets to buy. Another reason I begin homeschool planning for the next school year months in advance is so that in each month, I can slowly make my purchases rather than all at once.
9) Schedules And Weekly Planning
As books and curriculum start to come in, I begin scheduling our subjects into a weekly format. I personally categorize our subjects into three categories – Morning Collective, Daily Core Subjects, and Weekly Loop Subjects. As I note all the subjects we will cover, it has been helpful to list out which ones get covered daily (in our 4-day school schedule), and which subjects are only covered weekly (1-2x a week). So although we have well over 15 subjects, we actually only cover a handful each day, and in short 5-20 minute lessons each.
My curriculum homeschool planner has weekly planning pages included that I use to help me get an idea of how a week could look. This is especially helpful when more subjects are added to our school time, or if I need to adapt to a new weekly routine but don’t quite know how that’ll look. Having the visual of our day laid out for me made our school days look approachable, especially as a new homeschool mom or if something is changing from the previous year (which usually, it does). Even though I know my plans on paper are probably not what our day will look like completely, writing everything down still gives me a goal or idea in mind of how to structure and order our days.
These weekly planning sheets (image below) are the same as in my comprehensive and minimalist homeschool planners, so once I settle on how I am going to use my blank planning sheets, I begin adding our actual schedule with our first 6 weeks over to my actual comprehensive homeschool planner. I will write another blog article sharing how I plan our school weeks in the coming weeks!
10) Print, Pre-Read, And Other Preparations
As we get closer to our start date, I begin printing out materials such as picture study images, scripture passages, poetry for recitation and hymn sheets. I’ll pre-read or skim some of our books and add bookmarks, and take note of any key events, or people (this helps me be prepared for our history timeline or mapwork we’ll do). If I am using a guide, I make sure to skim through the lessons and make notes of the pages in my comprehensive planner so I can easily find where I need to go when lesson time comes.
I typically plan the next year’s art/picture study images, composer study playlists, hymns, scripture passages, poetry recitations, and read alouds at this time and prepare those materials so everything is readily available. I follow Ambleside Online schedules for picture study, composer study, hymns, and most read alouds. For Bible and poetry passages I choose myself.
A Mother’s Nourishment Is Also Preparation
As a way to be encouraged, and nourished as the teacher, I really enjoy listening to relevant podcasts that share insight on home education. I’ve found A Delectable Education, Charlotte Mason Show, Simply Charlotte Mason, The New Mason Jar Podcast with Cindy Rollins, and Thinking Love podcasts to be some of my go-to’s for Charlotte Mason homeschooling guidance (aside from her volumes). Risen Motherhood, Daily Grace Co, The Theology Mom, and At Home With Sally & friends are some of my favorite motherhood/womanhood podcasts I will turn to as I prepare my heart with fuel of encouragement.
Attending live or virtual homeschool conferences and virtual workshops have also been an impacting way I find useful in this time of preparation.
That is the bulk of my planning process for a new upcoming homeschool year. Of course, I can plan all these things and something might not work out. A curriculum change might be needed or our schedule might need to be adjusted slightly. I know I have to be willing and open to those last minute changes if it’s best.
I hope this article helped you see inside my planning process and inspired you in some way for your own planning. If you have any questions, feel free to use the “contact” page on my website or send a direct message on Instagram to reach out!
