Homeschool Planning

When June comes around, I think of two of my favorite things – my garden and my homeschool. And they both require planning! I think of how beautiful my garden might be, when it grows. Then I think of my homeschool. I see the next year stretching out before me, full of possibilities. I imagine how things could go, and what my daughter needs for next year. Then I start planning.  This group feature is designed to inspire and support you as you plan your homeschool for next year.  Our author team, full of veteran homeschoolers, brings to you tons of ideas, sharing creativity and many resources. Read on for helpful advice, how to’s, and even reviews of our favorite planners we use in our own homes.

First, here are some of our planning helps from our archives:

From The Curriculum Choice archives

The Ultimate Homeschool Planning Guide! A FREE ebook from our review authors! We share our very best planning tips and strategies in this ebook. Because curriculum choices go hand in hand with planning and scheduling, of course! Subscribers will find this free download at the bottom of the subscriber feed or email. Simply enter your email in the subscribe field in the upper right hand corner of the site.

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Homeschool Curriculum
Weekly Homeschool Planner – A Time-Saving Solution! The Well Planned Day – Homeschool Planner by Diana
Planners by Brenda
101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum by Cathy Duffy by Annie Kate

How to Make an Overall Plan for Your Homeschool Year by Barb

My Favorite Planner by Heather

Choosing Elementary Homeschool Curriculum

Choosing Middle School Homeschool Curriculum

Choosing High School Homeschool Curriculum

Let’s Homeschool High School review

Choosing Homeschool Curriculum for Multiple Ages

Special Needs Homeschooling

From Our Curriculum Choice Review Authors

Jen @ Forever, For Always, No Matter What:

Tips for Homeschool Planning for Multiple Ages – my tips for planning my family of six.

Planning our Five in a Row – FIAR has long be a favorite in our house.  Some planning tips for how we made it work in our home.

Tricia at Hodgepodge:

First off, I do plan our year in rough form. I explain that time in detail in my Annual Planning and Goal Setting habit. But I honestly do not plan it weekly. I look at our resources, gather what we need. I also spend time praying for and making goals for each child. I note that I need to schedule the eldest for the PSAT. I see that certain days will be busy with music lessons so I know I will need to use the slow cooker and schedule certain learning for those days. I make note of field trips. So we have an outline. Then, once we are in the nitty gritty of week-to-week homeschool, we make plans weekly.

Weekly Planning Meeting with Multiple Ages – Along with our habits, our weekly planning meeting helps build the ‘bones’ of our homeschool days. Our family meeting with all our children gives us an outline for the week ahead. There are so many benefits to this time together.

Planners by Well Planned Day: Student Planner Review, High School Planner and the Four Year High School Planner, (Daniele reviewed this planner as well here at The Curriculum Choice!) and the Family Homeschool Planner review.

The 10 Parts of Our Homeschool Schedule – Our school day doesn’t always happen exactly like this. Sometimes the lines blur. And there are daily challenges. But these are the basic bones, the habits of our day…There’s guaranteed to always be a challenge to my balancing skills. Daily! Besides these basics, there are extracurricular activities mixed into our schedule throughout the week.

Susan & Megan at Education Possible:

There are a number of things we take into consideration as we plan for a new homeschool year,  including: curriculum, co-op options, and skills we want our children to learn.  Here are a few of our favorite posts we hope will aid in your homeschool planning:

Learning With Other Families – How to start a small co-op to study a specific subject like science or literature.

101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum Review –  Our favorite resource to help create home education goals and plans.

7 Key Skills & Experiences to Prepare Your Middle School Students for High School – Simple and practical things you can do to help your children be prepared to enter their high school years.

5 Steps to Prep for Homeschool High School and & Avoid “Summer Slide” – A few things we are doing to prepare for high school

Betsy, who is a veteran homeschooler and consultant at BJ’s Homeschool:

She shares her blog series about how she helped her daughter get accepted to four colleges!  “Aiming towards colIege is all about the planning, and remembering, also, to find the play in your days..”

Our Steps to College – What about Researching?   “Researching the college entrance requirements made all the difference.”

Our Steps to College – The One About Planning —- “Once we finished our initial researching, and had our list of college requirements in hand, we begin to create an overall plan for our high school years….”

Our Steps to College – What about Curriculum? —-  ” Choosing curriculum for high school was really just the same for us, with one important difference….now we also had college requirements to think about as well. ”

Our Steps to College – Giving Credit Where Credit is Due – in three easy ways…”Giving credit “when credit is due” doesn’t have to cost money.  There are many free resources out there to help…”

Our Steps to College – The One about Electives ——“and don’t forget the fun of doing High School Electives, which are so motivating for your teens, and also can help them get into college!”

Shirley from Under An English Sky:

How We Use A.C.E. – This is a follow up post on my A.C.E review with more details on the ‘how’ we have made A.C.E work for us as well as how I plan our A.C.E learning.

A Peek Inside A Homeschool Mum’s Planner and New Planner – I LOVE homeschool planners. As each new school year approaches, planning my new homeschool planner is one of my highlights 😉

Planning Our Nature Study With the OHC Newsletter – We love using the Outdoor Hour Challenge as the basis for our nature study, here’s how I use the monthly newsletter to plan our challenges each month.

Cindy from Our Journey Westward:

How Do I Plan for the Upcoming School Year?  That’s the question answered quite simply in this post.

How Do You Know If a Child is Ready for Next Year’s Curriculum?  Homeschooling allows for great flexibility in curriculum choices.  This post helps you determine which curriculum you should include in next year’s plans.

When planning, I always browse my bookshelves for the tried and true curriculum before I ever consider anything else.  Our favorite curriculum choices for various grade levels are listed on these posts:  K-2nd, 3rd-5th, 6th-8th, 9th-12th.

And, as I plan the upcoming curriculum, I also plan how we will keep track of lesson plans, grades and all the other little things that go along with homeschooling.  Our Weekly Lesson Notebooks have worked very well for us!

Heidi from Home Schoolroom:

You can take a peak at the paperwork side of my homeschool planning.  I don’t use a purchased planner for our weekly lessons, but use simple forms that I create in a free spreadsheet program.

You can always visit my Curriculum and Plans page, where I keep links to our plans for the school years and summer…and links to my year-end review of what worked and didn’t.

And if any one else suffers from the tendency to plan too much, you can read about my struggles and things I’ve learned along the way.  A few months after sharing my over-planning habits, I shared how our homeschool had improved when I learned to let go a little.

Annie Kate from Tea Time with Annie Kate:

I have been making and revising homeschool plans for almost two decades.  By now I know that most plans do not work out as expected, and also that it doesn’t matter that they don’t.  I’ve also learned that learning flows more smoothly when I have a plan, even if we do not follow it.

Most importantly, I’ve discovered that everything works out better if you think deeply before you actually begin to plan.  That’s why I want to share some thoughts about important topics such as not finishing the school year, how everyday reality meshes with homeschool dreams, becoming your teen’s guidance counsellor, high school record keeping, and even your own post-homeschooling life.

Homeschool Planning From Around the Web

Homeschool Planning – Ultimate Guides with iHomeschool Network

Bonus! Free Ultimate Planning Guide ebook – Special for Subscribers!

• Don’t forget – when you subscribe to The Curriculum Choice you receive our free ebook, The Ultimate Homeschool Planning Guide! Just enter your email address in the upper right hand corner.

Follow Curriculum’s board Homeschool Planning and Scheduling on Pinterest.

• Our Curriculum Choice Homeschool Planning and Scheduling Pinterest board
• Have you enjoyed this special post from our review authors? Our Curriculum Choice review team features a topic monthly. You can see all that our authors have shared on electives, math, curriculum choices and more under Review Team Features.

~Hosted by Betsy Sproger from BJ’s Homeschool.