Yearly Homeschool Planning: Part 2- Subject Lists And Subject Scheduling

Welcome back to the blog! If you haven’t had a chance yet, you can read Part 1 of the Yearly Homeschool Planning blog series here. Today I’ll be sharing a walk-through of my next phase of planning- choosing subjects and creating an overview of our subject schedule.

In this blog series, I’m sharing my process of planning out our 2024-2025 homeschool year for 4th and 1st grade. This series will take a few months to complete while I write these articles in real-time as I’m planning so that I can get into as much detail as possible. I hope this series gives you ideas and tips for your own homeschool planning, and that you’ll keep coming back to read more as we move along in the series! As always, I’m happy to further answer questions in the comments!

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Subject Planning Lists

Before getting into curriculum choices, books, and resources, I begin with writing down subject lists we will include for Year 4, Year 1, and which will be included in Family Studies. I use the subject planning sheets in my Homeschool Curriculum Planner and print 3 copies for Year 4, Year 1, and family subjects.

We follow Charlotte Mason’s method of a wide and various feast of subjects, which simply means going beyond math, reading, and writing.

Year 4 Subject Planning

I begin by writing down all the subjects we’ll cover, starting with Year 4. We are doing things slightly different from last year’s subject list, and adding a few modern subjects like coding and typing. The subjects for Year 4 include:

• Bible
• History (Early Modern Age)
• Biographies
• Math
• Grammar
• Spelling
• Copywork/Dictation
• Reading
• Literature and Tales
• Natural History
• Geography
• Science Stream
• Notebooking
• Recitation
• Latin and Continued Spanish
• Nature Study
• Typing
• Coding
• Piano
• Logic/Critical Thinking
• Poetry
• Plutarch
• Shakespeare
• Mapwork
• History Timeline
• Artist Study
• Composer Study

It may seem like a long list, but most of these subjects have been implemented in our homeschool schedule since Years 1-3, and we’re only adding in a handful of new ones such as Plutarch, Grammar, and Latin. After evaluating our Year 3, and having discussions with my oldest, we are both looking forward to adding these new subjects to her education.

Year 1 Subject Planning

This will be my second time through Year 1, which has made it easier to know how to implement a wide and various feast for my son’s first formal school year. His eagerness to begin formal lessons is something I’ve found worth the wait and am glad we held off starting anything majorly formal until now. Most of these subjects he will be familiar with since he sat with me when I did lessons with my oldest. He also participated in our morning time which included a handful of these subjects. For reference, he will be 6 in the Fall of 2024. Subjects for Year 1:

• Bible
• History (Ancient History of the World and America)
• Natural History
• Geography
• Nature Study
• Mapwork
• Literature/Tales
• Math
• Handwriting
• Reading
• Timeline (personal timeline)
• Spanish
• Artwork Study
• Composer Study
• Poetry
• Piano
• Recitations
• Shakespeare

Family Studies

Once I made my lists of subjects for Year 4 and Year 1, I began to think about which subjects we could include as family study subjects. Because my children have a larger age/level gap between them, subjects like Math, Language Arts, and Reading will remain separate independent studies. However, the majority of our subjects overlap between the two of them which will make it simpler to do together.

Family Subject Planning

• Bible
• Ancient History
• Tales
• Geography
• Science
• Literature
• Poetry
• Artist and Composer Studies
• Shakespeare
• Vocabulary
• Nature Study
• Piano
• Spanish
• Recitations/Memory Work
• Art/Handicrafts

Now that I’ve made our subject lists for each child, and know which ones we will do together, I start to look at scheduling my subjects in a week.

Subject Scheduling

The key to a wide and various feast of subjects begins with determining which subjects are done daily, and which ones are only done weekly.

If you’re just starting your homeschooling journey, you might be surprised to know that most of our subjects are done on a weekly loop, rather than completed daily.

For example, subjects like math, reading practice, and writing are typically done daily, Monday through Thursday (sometimes Fridays).

However, subjects like history, geography, and science are weekly subjects, even though they might take 2 days a week to complete. I consider all this when mapping out our subject schedule and separate each subject into either a daily or weekly subject list.

Also at this point in my yearly homeschool planning, I am not as concerned with the actual days in choosing which subject will be scheduled when, but rather, I use my subject scheduling sheet as a visual to see the variety of subjects laid out in a way that won’t feel like too much or too little on any given day.

It’s also important to note here that because we follow a Charlotte Mason homeschool style, most of our lessons are short, 10-20 minutes each. This is also key to allowing us the ability to have a wide curriculum of subjects.

Last year we would only complete Family Studies on Mondays, but now that I have another formal student, I might extend family studies throughout the week rather than complete in only one day. You can read here how I began Family Studies in the first place.

Why I Like To “Subject Schedule” At The Beginning Of My Yearly Planning

It’s one thing to make a list of subjects you want to include in the year, but it’s entirely another thing to figure out how to implement all of them in a given week. By getting the “big picture” subject schedule written down, and determining which subjects are daily and which are weekly, I feel better prepared to choose curriculum, books, and resources to use, and feel more settled in the decisions of our subject choices, especially when they go beyond any specific curriculum subject list (which ours does).

Even if you choose a boxed curriculum that already has a subject list you’ll follow along with, it may benefit you to still schedule out (as a practice tool, not the final schedule) those subjects in a week to see how you’ll implement them well. You might even be surprised to see more or less room in your week than you initially thought, which is extremely valuable in crafting your yearly homeschool plans. Do you have room for another subject your children are wanting to learn? Do you have the space in your week for that weekly co-op? What might you need to cut back if the educational feast or extracurricular activities are too much? These are questions we can intentionally ask ourselves at the beginning of our yearly homeschool planning to prevent decision fatigue and burn out during the homeschool year.

Subject Overview Planning

Lastly, with my subject list and schedule finished, I’ll make sure to also include an overview plan or a course of study for each subject by term. For example, in Geography, we’ll be studying earth science, the water cycle, and the 50 states of the US. For history, we are going to have two streams, Ancient and Early Modern America, so I am deciding further what parts of history will be covered in each term.

I already somewhat had an overview plan in my head, but getting it on paper, all in one place helps me keep it much more organized and will serve me down the road as I begin to look for specific resources and books. To be honest, it will also prevent me from going out and bringing in additional resources and books that aren’t part of the topics we’ll be learning about (though sometimes there’s exceptions).

Coming Up In This Blog Series…

In the next blog article, I’ll be discussing my favorite part about yearly homeschool planning….curriculum considerations and the treasure hunt of finding the best-fit living books, and resources for our homeschool year!

• Read Part 1- Overview Plans Here
• Read Part 2- Subject Lists And Subject Scheduling Here