25 ULTIMATE Tips How To Plan A Homeschool Year

Part of the reason I wrote 25 ULTIMATE Tips How To Plan A Homeschool Year is because after homeschooling for over a decade and as a mom of many I found that each year became a little more challenging to plan then the last. Eventually I realized there were various reasons for this, but one big one is because I had to keep re-learning and re-remembering planning techniques I had forgotten since the last year. Anyone else have that problem-where you learn something but life gets so busy that it’s forgotten too quickly?

I’ve homeschooled from the start, since 2009, have 6 children (in every grade group including high, middle, elementary, k, and pre). I like to think this is the reason why I can’t remember things like I used to be able to (like my age-or whether I’m coming or going)! With over a decade behind me in this homeschooling gig, and so many more ahead, I realized that each year I was spending a significant amount of time re-learning what I had already learned the year before, so I decided to thoughtfully consider the things that help me as I planned each school year and WRITE THEM DOWN so I could read them when planning time came around again.

Initially this was going to be a post with 10 Tips For How To Plan A Homeschool Year, but as I started writing down everything I wanted to remember that helps me make planning possible, productive, and easier my list kept growing. Soon I had 12 tips, then 15, then 20…before I knew it I had 25 ULTIMATE Tips How To Plan A Homeschool Year!

I admit, this is a lot. But so is homeschooling and, well parenting period. You might want to save this post and take it in a couple chunks.

Intro…

If this is your first year and the thought of planning overwhelms you, please remember as you read this that YOU DON’T HAVE TO make all the plans YOURSELF!

There are SO MANY boxed curriculums out there that provide an open and go plan for you. If you still want to plan your own year but are still nervous about it, you might consider purchasing the books I talk about IN THIS ARTICLE and using them as your curriculum guide-especially if you do not plan to homeschool through 12th grade.

If you choose a boxed curriculum I use and highly recommend My Fathers World for a more Charlotte Mason based, effective curriculum choice that fits all learning styles and can ignite a love of learning for your children, plus a love of teaching for you. If you call the staff they will help you choose where to place your children-and they are wonderful. My Fathers World is an excellent choice for multi grade homeschool families as well because they group grades 3-6 with add on’s for 7th and 8th. This means you can teach all your children in those grades at the same time in most subjects (with the exception for language arts and maths).

If you are not sure if My Fathers World is right for you and want to look around some more my post Picking The Best Homeschool Style For Your Family will assist you with that and help you decide what type of curriculum is the best fit for you.

If you are a few steps ahead of that though and/or reeeallly want to be more creative and have the freedom of putting together a year, then read on!

Disclaimer

Every family is unique, with special preferences and needs. These 25 ULTIMATE Tips How To Plan A Homeschool Year is provided as more of a guide for you to glean from rather than an exact formula to be followed.

In addition, each year brings new things and challenges-don’t be surprised if what works this year doesn’t work next!

*Please note; as a blogger I spend many hours creating helpful content for you, so this post does contain affiliate links. It DOES NOT cost you extra to shop my links, but it does help me cover my blogging expenses so THANK YOU for using my links!

Why Create Your Own Plan?

So why create your own plan when you could just buy a plan and a boxed curriculum? Well, there are a few reasons. Sometimes you just cannot find a plan that meets specific needs for your family-that has been our reason in times past.

Another reason is it can be far more affordable to put together your own plan.

Perhaps the most exciting reason of all is that when you plan your homeschool for even just part of the homeschool years (as opposed to using a pre-made plan and a boxed curriculum) you have such an amazing opportunity to give your children exactly what they need, a lot of what they love to fuel their passion for learning, and you can give them so much more than they would ever be getting in a public or even private school.

In over 10 years some of our richest homeschool years were My Father’s World Exploring Countries and Cultures, and the years that I planned myself.

25 ULTIMATE Tips How To Plan A Homeschool Year

1. Begin with prayer. God’s foresight and direction is worth more than all the planning tips and tricks out there!
   
   
2. Expect to feel overwhelmed a couple times and need breaks-warn your hubby that you are planning and it could get intense :-D.
   
   
3. Make sure you have freezer meals ready to go in case you are on a planning roll and can’t stop.
   
   
4. Don’t plan to be done in one day. When you have to take a break make of note of where you left off and what you were planning to tackle next.
   
   
5. Join homeschool support groups so you can ask lot’s of questions that come up. Look on Facebook for homeschooling mama groups. There are even groups for large family homeschooling moms, and curriculum specific groups as well. Have curriculum staff “on speed dial” so to speak and write down the support groups names in a place where you can find them so you can get answers to questions quickly.
   
   
6. In the initial planning phase, look up your state requirements-are you required to teach certain subjects and teach for a certain number of hours? Our state has 11 required subjects, for example. Some states require you to chart hours and school for a specific number of ours. Each state has it’s own standards and I highly recommend adhering to them.
   
   
7. Start jotting down ideas and put them in a binder so you can find them easily. I am always jotting down idea’s all year long. I absolutely love Instagram and Facebook as places for inspiration. I am following hundreds of homeschoolers so my feeds are always full of inspo which I glean from and make notes for. Also, go through your own bookshelves. This is a great way to assure you don’t buy something you already have, and that you utilize things you might have forgotten otherwise.
   
   As you begin to plan, start with a simple notebook and PENCIL and just start jotting down idea’s you love.
   
   Remember-this phase is the rough draft phase so it need not be pretty! Whatever you do don’t print up a nice schedule and laminate it without taking it on a months test run, lol (totally made that mistake-multiple times-and those laminating sheets aren’t cheap, lol)! Plan to make adjustment after the first week, to reevaluate and also after the first month, and write down some dates throughout the year to re-evaluate, adjust the plan as needed.
   
   
8. Make of list of your personal requirements and goals for your children. What do you want your children to learn? You might want to take a few days to do this.
9. This next suggestion is going to freak you out at first but its actually very easy and for me it only took 10 minutes! So bear with me here and remember you can wait to do this, you do not have to do it now-it just helps A LOT to have this as a reference when you plan a year.
   
   As you are planning your personal requirements for your children it can be a massive help to plan all 12 years, not just for this year! Before you run away screaming in horror-let me tell you this is way easier than you think.
   
   All you have to do is create a basic idea of what you want your child to learn over the course of their remaining school years. I’m not talking curriculum choices, I’m just talking topics overall. Here’s a sample of mine (I created an empty one for you to see). Using this chart you just check off the years you intend to teach specific subjects.
   
   So essentially, ask yourself if you want your children to learn art, poetry, character, and so on? Do you want them to learn some business skills because you can see you have some innovative and industrial kids?
   
   I included an excellent video at the end of this post by Simply Charlotte Mason that explains this in more detail and shows you how easy this to plan what you want them to learn and graduate from your homeschool with.
   
   If you don’t do this step you’ll be like a ship setting sail without a clear idea of your destination and you could miss some important things if you are planning yourself. Or, if you are following a boxed curriculum-which is totally okay and will produce a well educated child- in the end you might find there were a few things you wish the curriculum had included but didn’t.
   
   A great example of this is character training and etiquette-or manners. By creating your list of requirements you can then choose from the 100’s of curriculum’s and find one that even includes things you want for your child! Don’s skip this step because it’s what is going to keep your homeschool on track as the years progress, and it can help you from getting too behind in areas. By the way, as your children mature you might find there are area’s you want to remove and replace. That’s one of the beautiful things about being in charge! You can adjust to meet your kids needs which can be such a great help through high school when it comes time to choose electives!
   
   
10. Know your teaching style and your child’s learning style, read Picking The Best Homeschool Style For Your Family. This will be a huge help as you are shopping for curriculum.
    
    
11. Know your timeline-or how many day’s/weeks you are working with. To figure this out, get a calendar or a day planner.
    
    To plan your timeline just look through your planner and plan the days and weeks you want to do school, and plan the weeks you want to take off. Typically people choose a 180 school day year or 36 weeks. Since our family has so many scholars plus two having ADHD we need more than that.
    
    I used to get simple planners from Walmart but eventually they didn’t cut it anymore and so I upgraded to Plum Planners because the simple planners were no longer meeting my planning needs. Read my Plum Planner Review here. Plum Paper Planners does provide homeschool and student planners as well. I’ll have more on them below.
    
    
12. Include a buffer for sick days as well as buffer days for things that come up, for example we are plugged into a huge network of homeschoolers and every month something fun is happening so I plan for that if I can. Remember-if this is your first year schooling and you have multiple children you will not be able to take care of sick children and send the well ones off to school-you will need to take care of both at the same time and you can’t always do both so you’ll likely have a little time to make up for.
    
    Remember to include a day here and there for teacher planning/grading days so you can re-evaluate what is working and what is not-and so you can clean out and reorganize the school area. I like having one weekend a month for this. It’s also easy to fit this in at the beginning of a new semester if you do semesters.
    
    And remember to plan for holidays too!
    
    
13. As you plan on and off weeks, be aware of the wrenches that could potentially pop up. The birth of a new baby, the two years following the birth of a baby, visitors, holidays and sick days are some huge factors that can derail school days and weeks and cause you not to finish on time-and in some cases at all! So you’ll want to consider the time things like this will take.
    
    If you have visitors/family coming through often, and also after holiday breaks be aware that it can really eat into the school year if you haven’t planned the extra time for that. If you take a week off school it can take a full week to get back into the groove you were in before.
    
    
14. Don’t worry about over planning and under planning-you can add and take away things as you go-as long as you plan times to re-evaluate. Just be sure to always remind yourself that you have permission to add and take away!
    
    
15. Plan to go slow for the first two weeks at least-we like to start two weeks to a month early so we have wiggle room to make adjustments, for attitude alignments, and so the kids can get used to the new routine. Keep it as simple as possible-in more ways than one!
    
    
16. About the clock; If you are schooling with babies and other small children around it’s best not to plan specific times if you don’t have to-plan windows instead. What I mean is to plan an early morning time frame, later morning time frame, after lunch, and afternoon time frames. Having exact times will only set yourself up for failure if you have little ones you are working with. However-set times could work better for older independent workers. Once your kids start getting more independent and can work on their own you DO want to start transitioning them into set times and make them take the wheel and be responsible for their start times. This is good for them, and will save your sanity too. BTW, if you have small children and are wondering how to homeschool with them and their distractions read How To Homeschool With A Baby.
    
    
17. Create a cushy planning environment. Personally I love to have classical cello music playing and a steady stream of coffee and tea coming while I plan! This always get’s my brain working. If possible try to get someone to take your kids while you plan. In 12 years I’ve only had this a couple times, so if you don’t have someone to take your kids you’ll just need to expect the planning to take longer. If I don’t have someone to take the kids it usually takes me about two weeks. If I have someone to it takes 2-3 days (I think with my high schooler this year it would have taken longer regardless though).
    
    If you don’t have someone to take the kids make sure you have lots of snacks and documentaries or projects for them to keep them busy, out of trouble, and out of your hair. Be sure to have snacks and some fun beverages on hand for yourself too! Low blood sugar crashes a planning roll fast.
    
    
18. Know that your kids should finish at least 75% of the curriculum (according to experts-you can always ask your curriculum makers how much they recommend finishing-some say 75%, some curriculum’s it’s recommended to do 80%)-but don’t make the mistake I did of thinking they need to finish every single problem in every single book.
    
    
19. Keep a binder full of your resources. Keep your 12 year goals and other resources in it. I have one for the middle and elementary schooler’s and a separate one for my high school students.
    
    
    
20. In your plan, if you have a particularly full schedule don’t be afraid to put a special school activity on Sunday and include Daddy, or plan to have the kids show daddy what they have been learning. In our family we like to do Bible and a history reading time on Sunday.
    
    
21. Plan two or three light days a month. If your child is motivated you might want to plan more. Use these for catching up or so the kids can explore their interests. You might be shocked at the amount of school credit hours your kids fill on their own! For example, my oldest has been doing what would be considered 4 credits per year (120 to 200 hours per year) in the arts (guitar, singing, art, and graphic art) for years now. By giving them time of their own to explore their interests and providing the resources they need you’ll be igniting a love for learning for them that won’t likely burn out but will only grow!!
    
    
22. If you are piecing together your children’s curriculum yourself as opposed to a boxed curriculum, one of the simplest ways to plan is to take all the books you want to get through in the school year, and decide how many weeks/what weeks you’ll be doing school. With each subject/book simply divide the lessons (or pages) into the weeks so you know how much you need to do each week. As mentioned above, don’t forget to factor in extra time for sick days. You can also divide the year into semesters and only work a portion of the books in a semester if you have a lot of books you’ll be going through and don’t want to be working in 30 books at the same time.
    
    For example, if a book has 400 pages and you want to get through it in 36 weeks divide 400 by 36. You’ll need to do approximately 12 pages per week to finish in time.
    
    
23. If you are planning a schedule for multiple children, have them doing as many subjects together at the same time as you can. For example, social studies, science, art, Bible time, and literature can all be taught to all the kids at the same time. Grammar can as well, just teach the youngest kids first (using their lesson as a review for the older kids) and then let the younger kids go play if they want and then teach to the older children.
    
    So when you are planning your schedule you may want put grades 3-6 on ONE template, and simply have them all sit through the same lesson. I’ll write a more in depth post on this soon. If you like the idea of teaching multiple grades at the same time but don’t want to plan all the details check out My Fathers World Curriculum. You can read my un-sponsored review of it HERE.
    
    If you are planning yourself though you might like to use Love At Home Education. Love At Home provides delightful and packed yet easy to teach unit studies-I cannot recommend them highly enough. You can read my review of them HERE. You definitely get more than your money’s worth for many reasons with their unit studies.
    
    
24. Once you have your schedule, put it in a place where all the kids can see it without having to dig for it in a binder. We started doing this last year and it made all the difference in the world. We used a chalk board and I was able to direct the children to it whenever they could not remember what to do next. This kept everyone doing their work even while I was occupied with nursing/laundry, ect…If they came to a subject that required my help I would simply have the kids move to the next subject they could do independently until I could help them.
    
    
    
25. So this could be my second favorite tip-right behind prayer. This tip took me way to long to learn. Here it is. Involve your husband. He needs to see the process and you’ll need his support and input. Don’t do what I did for 9 years and take it all on yourself and expect he’s too busy or that it will be too difficult to explain things to him! When I finally involved my husband in the planning process he felt awful for not getting involved sooner (which I feel like was totally my fault). He was so appalled and although he was supportive before he became more supportive because he had a better idea of how to support me.
    
    I eventually asked my husband to consider each child and write a list of area’s we need to work on for each child-his insight was surprising because my hubby is the quieter type with things like this and I didn’t realize he had been paying such close attention to each of our children’s needs! I’m factoring the area’s he pointed out that our children need work in into our children’s school year.

When to Plan Your Upcoming School Year

You can plan your school year whenever you want! When to plan will depend a lot on your nature. Do you like to plan last minute or do you like to take your time? I personally find it works best for me to begin planning my school year in February. This is when I simply start jotting rough notes down in my planner for the upcoming school year. I usually have the plans finished by June.

FYI a lot of curriculum providers have sales in April and May. Because of this I like to have a good idea of what I intend to use for curriculum all planned out by the end of March so I can get it on sale.

Homeschool Planners

I like to get my planners for the upcoming year either in November during Black Friday sales or else Mothers Day since those are the biggest sale times (if you contact me I can send you a referral link through Plum Paper Planner to get you 10% off your first order though). Simply use the form below and type in SEND ME A PLUM PAPER REFERAL LINK PLEASE and I’ll get that for you.

Other homeschool planners I’ve seen that look wonderful include The Well Planned and A Simple Plan. I’m actually considering A Simple Plan for next year. The planners are beautiful and look like they may work a little better for my big family than Plum Paper Planners.

A Note About Schedule Layouts

Also, I know that schedule’s and layouts are SO very personal. What works for me might ruin another family’s homeschool! But if you are looking for a ready made schedule layout that you can just fill in for your school year or harvest idea’s from you can have mine. I’ve included it as a freebie for you in pdf as well as an Open Office file version that you can edit to your specific needs. This has been my favorite layout through the years, for some reason my eyes like it and it doesn’t look overwhelming to me. You can use one per child, or you can simply write with different colors for different children on the same sheet.

This year I have three, one for the high scholar, one for the middle and upper elementary, and one for the two younger children in pre through 1st.

Resources And Helpful Links

Here is the video I told you about with some absolutely wonderful planning tips-some I’ve covered but this gives extra details. By the way, if you are not following Simply Charlotte Mason you should be!

Closing

So there are my best tips! I’m sure there are things I’ve forgotten, so if you have some more that I’ve not covered will you please include them in the comments section for myself and others below?

If you enjoyed 25 ULTIMATE Tips How To Plan A Homeschool Year here are some additional links and resources you’ll enjoy!

• Did you know that having an effective chore system can make a huge difference in your home and homeschool? Go check out my chore chart system and learn how it can benefit and add peace to your homeschool!
• How I Teach Kids With Various Learning Styles (And You Can Too)
• An Educational Website With No Books!!
• Our Inattentive ADHD Story Plus A FREE Printable Focus Cheat Sheet
• Homeschool Room Idea’s-Create Learning Spaces
• Teaching Art in Homeschool, Curriculum Round Up
• 101 Reasons to Homeschool-this is a great article by Colleen, an educational specialist and the blogger over at Raising Lifelong Learners, and this article gives some excellent reasons to homeschool, including emotional and social reasons.
• Is math your least favorite subject, and are you looking for an excellent math curriculum? We love Math U See and Teaching Textbooks. You can read my unsponsored Teaching Textbooks review HERE.
• Love our homeschool space? Shop our homeschool here.

• Discover 4 Tips For Homeschooling Kid’s In Multiple Grades AT THE SAME TIME
• How To Homeschool With A Baby
• How I Teach Kids With Various Learning Styles (And You Can Too)
• 25 Tips For How To Plan A Homeschool Year
• Love at Home Education Curriculum Review
• Best Effective Chore Chart System for Kids
• Discover Teaching Textbooks, A Review
• Picking The Best Homeschool Style For Your Family
• My Fathers World Homeschool Curriculum Review & Video Walkthrough
• Homeschool Room Idea’s-Create Learning Spaces
• Our Inattentive ADHD Story Plus A FREE Printable Focus Cheat Sheet

This post might contain affiliate links. See disclaimer here.