It’s that time of year again. Spring break is here where we live and all the dog-eared homeschool catalogues are scattered around my workspace (aka, the kitchen table and my bag). All of the thoughts and notes I’ve left myself during the past school year come into play as I decide what books and resources need to be ordered. As a total academic nerd and book lover, I’m not ashamed to admit that this is, by far, my favourite time of the year. This post is all about how I plan my homeschool year while staying organised and on track.
1. Make Your Calendar
If you’re planning a homeschool year, the very first step is to set up your calendar. You should have a start date, an end date and any breaks scheduled so that you know how many weeks are in your academic calendar. This is the essential first step for any planning. Whether you follow a traditional American academic calendar with two semesters or not, you should know what days you are doing school and how long a “grade” will last so that you can effectively plan your lessons.
2. Know Where You’re Going
If you’re new to homeschooling and are still educating yourself and developing your ideas on what you want to accomplish academically in your homeschool, you might be taking this a year at a time. I get it. If this is all new to you, I can see how it could be very overwhelming. I have the advantage of having been homeschooled myself as well as having taught professionally for several years. As a result, I’m very opinionated on what I consider a “proper education” and what my homeschool goals are.
When I’m asked how I plan my homeschool year, the short answer is Notion. I use Notion to organise my scope and sequence for my homeschool, from preschool all the way through high school. I don’t have all of the details filled in, but I make notes as I read things and find out about opportunities and resources. Events like “election year” are marked so I can cover US government in enough time to take advantage of the timing. Special things like the AMC are noted so I can ask my daughter if she is interested and wants to participate when it’s that time. These are notes to myself so that I don’t miss opportunities or run out of time to cover what I want to cover before my kids graduate.
Notion is also a great way to keep track of what courses I plan on teaching for future grades. When I plan on introducing Latin. When we’re going to spend a year deep diving into British history. I also keep track of milestones for extracurriculars like recitals or cultural events attended. It’s how I keep a bird’s eye view and not get hyperfocused on trying to cram all the things I want to share with my kids into one crazy year. If you’re an academic nerd like me, you’ll understand the temptation.
3. Evaluate What’s Working and Not
Before you can plan your next homeschool year, you’re going to want to reflect on the past year. Even if you think you know exactly which textbooks you want to use and which subjects to cover and when, sometimes things don’t go as planned. Sometimes, your student will fly through material you thought would be challenging enough to last an entire academic year and it doesn’t. Sometimes your student suddenly starts struggling with material halfway through the year and now you’re not going to finish on time. It happens. But the ability to be flexible is what makes homeschooling so great. You don’t plow through the difficult stuff and you don’t give busy work to your high achievers. So take time to figure out what worked this past year, what didn’t and plan the next year accordingly. Even though you have your scope of where you’re headed with your homeschool, the nitty gritty of what you’re doing in any particular year or semester can be tweaked to fit the student.
4. Plan Your Summer
I have an entire post on making summer plans, but as far as how to plan a homeschool year, keep in mind that summer is a great time to wrap up loose ends or focus on some areas that need a bit of extra attention. If there is a gap between where we will end this academic year and where I want to start in September, I usually take the summer to do some light catchup. I have learned from experience though that it’s best to keep summer goals for my daughter to a minimum because she never gets as much done as I think she will. We truly do lean into summer as a family and chill quite a bit. Work hard, play hard.
As a teacher, my job over the summer is to focus on preparing for next year. That usually includes reading teacher manuals for new subjects I’m not super familiar with, making or collecting resources (especially for science and history!) and possibly even budgeting for big items like a microscope. If you take the time to mentally walk through the next year and see where you will be going in each subject, you can start the year feeling prepared. I don’t make my weekly school schedules in advance, but I do know what a typical day needs to look like in order to get where I plan on being at the end of first semester. You’d be amazed how many reviews of science textbooks I’ve read recently where the reviewer was complaining about not being able to find the materials the day of the lesson. It’s like they didn’t even read through the book before starting to teach it.
And if you’re someone with a tight budget for homeschooling, the sooner you can get a head start, the better. Keep an eye out for sales and coupons – they are few and far between, but they do exist. I also try to spread out the textbook ordering so it doesn’t all hit at once. Depending on coupons and promotions, I’ll try to order the subjects that require the most prep first. And each month or paycheque I’ll order another subject or textbook until I have everything I need for the next grade. The library can be great, but they don’t always have what you need. If you want your library to order a book, the sooner you do that, the more time they have to follow up on that for you.
What did I miss? How do you plan your homeschool year? Do you take the summer “break” to prepare?
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