Last year I shared a series about homeschool planning detailing how and why I plan our homeschool, what yearly planning looks like and even weekly planning. I'm not going to rehash those in great detail, but I encourage you to flip back to them if you need some help in planning out your school year. Today, I just want to note a few tweaks I've made to our system and show how planning from year to year is an evolving process. I'm 90% done with all my planning for the next year, as I started pulling it all together back in the middle of April.
Yearly Planning
My planning started out pretty typical mapping out what will be our year would look like. I started with the day after labor day and planned out going through the middle of July. I blocked off trips home to Alabama for Thanksgiving and for the kids in March/April. I planned for a good Christmas break. The usual stuff.
Next I started planning our subjects for the year. I knew I wanted to tackle the older kids' last science for high school credit, and at the homeschool convention the two oldest found a program that they were really excited about that is incredibly interactive. Therefore, we have Advanced Physical Science for this year's science. Next I decided since we've done so much world history and just finished up our US history that it was time to explore geography and look at current events worldwide. Aside from those two core classes covered I decided that we needed to tackle a grammar class officially, to cover any gaps that we might have from my writing based approach to it. Then I also decided to focus on spelling which is a week area for all my dyslexic kids. Counting our next level of math and continuing with reading, round out our school year. So I sat down and made up a schedule to figure out how I would work all that into our days and weeks. It became quickly evident that Mondays are going to be full with library trips, online classes, and co-op. I wanted to keep our Fridays clear for adventures, so that left me working everything into three days.
Homeschool Tip: Consider what you want your weeks to look like as well as your days. Be sure that you have time for everything that you want to cover without overscheduling.
This is always a challenge for me, I always want to do so many things that would be good for the kids each year, and I've learned that I can't run subjects from dawn to dusk or they get burned out and don't enjoy the learning process. Everyone this year is excited about our subjects, and even the ones like grammar and spelling that aren't favorites are going to be approached differently which has everyone optimistic about the next year, so I'm calling our yearly planning a win.
Curriculum Mapping
You might recall that last year I tried mapping out my history for the entire year on my weekly spreads. For a long while that kept me on track, but inevitably something came up that necessitated us getting off the schedule. And then I was struggling to make adjustments. This year, I printed up curriculum mapping sheets for four subjects. This might also prove useful for you if you are adjusting the number of times that you do a subject each week. In the past our science has been written for 2 days a week, and I wanted to do it daily. This year science was geared for 5 days a week and geography was geared to 4 or 5 days a week, and I wanted both to be a 3 or 4 day a week class.
Other subjects are more cut and dry. Grammar was flexible. Spelling and math were just continuing in the next step. I didn't add in flex time this year which was so useful in keeping us on track last year. Since I was putting all the information in a curriculum map I decided I would just pick up or delay a week as needed without scheduling in flex weeks. However, I did note when my Thanksgiving break, etc were so that I wasn't scheduling work when we weren't planning to have class.
Homeschool Tip: Planning out your year in a curriculum map gives you a more realistic picture of how much material you can cover in a single year.
In order to accommodate the scheduled breaks and a 3 day a week core work schedule it became evident from curriculum mapping that I needed 50 weeks to cover everything that I wanted to. So I extended my school year on my year at a glance to the last week in August through the first week of next August. Since I was considering moving closer to a year round schedule over the next year or two that worked out just fine for us. Gary is less than thrilled with it, but I think it's going to work great. The good news though is if it doesn't work we can always change course.
Final Touches
At this point it was time to figure in a new experiment a friend and I are trying this year. We are going to do our own mini co-op at my house every other week for a couple of hourse in the morning and do a synthesis of geography and work on an extra science project together. Then I will continue with our regular school day. As the main planner, and the teacher of the less defined subject, I sat down and planned out what we'd cover each meeting. So now that I had all the factors accounted for I could schedule a trial week or two. So at that point I planned our first two weeks of school.
Homeschool Tip: Trial a week or two and be sure that the plan looks workable and that there aren't any glaring issues between your planning and real life.
Oh I haven't completely lesson planned those two weeks, but I was able to get science and geography planned out on schedule, and the proof was in the pudding - it worked. So I am pretty confident that we are set up for a successful school year. Now, just remind me of that about the beginning of January. Ha!
And remember if you like the photos you see, I'm an affiliate with One Stop Planners, and I'd appreciate it if you'd order through this link. While it won't cost you any extra, I will get paid a small amount. I hope you'll share your own tips and tricks for planning out a school year with the rest of us. Planning out our homeschool is a privilege and joy that truly lets us influence our child's education and create the kind of life we want as a family. It lets us control our schedule and the pace of our days in a way that other educational options don't. So, enjoy the process and create something as unique as your family.
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