My Guide to Imperfect Homeschool Planning & Scheduling

This is my first year to attempt to plan out our entire  homeschool year before the year begins.

After 8 years of homeschooling without doing a full year plan, why bother?

Honestly for many years I thought, why all the fuss with the planning? just open up your book and do the next thing! I mean I would do the general overview planning, what everyone was going to be doing, and a general schedule of the day. I would mark off our vacation times at Christmas and Easter, but I didn’t do too much more than that, at least not very far in advance.

Why the change?

“Begin with the end in mind”

It’s hard to have a specific date to end the school year if you have no plan.

It’s difficult to stay on track if you don’t know where you are supposed to be!

It’s easier to be flexible with a framework in place.

Making room for field trips, vacations, days off in advance makes the weeks and months feel less chaotic.

and this is a big one, my older kids are getting older. High school is next year for my oldest. We will both do well to have more accountability.

I’m not doing this to become a drill sergeant instead of a mentor/teacher.

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination”

So where does one begin?

Scheduling Homeschool Days

My post from a couple of years ago on scheduling our days still holds fairly true. I think this was my biggest frustration as a new homeschooler, I just couldn’t imagine how our days might look. I could only envision what my public school days looked like. Every homeschool mom I talked to said each person’s days looks different. Oh how I wanted to be a fly on the wall in another homeschool mom’s home! The truth is every home does look different. What works in my house won’t necessarily work in yours.

As our kids are getting older, they are each getting busier with their own activities. No two days in our week look alike. Don’t get bogged down in trying to come up with the “perfect” schedule. There isn’t one and what works today might not work tomorrow! Get started and be flexible to allow changes throughout the months.

Every subject does not have to be tackled every day. It’s okay to do a bulk of the subjects in four days and leave the 5th day as a catch-up day, a day for errands, or a day for co-ops and field trips.

Once you have the framework of your day, it’s easier to start planning the weeks and the months.

How to Start Homeschool Planning

First, pick a planner that works for you. This year I’m using the Simple Plan Planner from Mardel. I did a review at The Curriculum Choice, so you can see if it might work for you.

– Open up your planner and start by choosing your start date as well as your end date. {Be sure to check with the laws in your particular state to be sure you meet the minimum requirements.}

– Next mark off your vacation and break times such as the days you want to take off over Christmas and Easter.

– Then account for any field trips, co-op days and other outside activities through the week.

– Gather your curriculum, pick a subject and start writing lessons down in the planner.

– Check out how often you will do each subject. In our house we do math daily, our history reading daily, religion daily etc. We do science two times a week as well as our formal writing program. Obviously in my planner I won’t jot down 5 lessons for science each week! This is why it’s helpful to have a daily schedule in mind.

Once I had that part done, and it does take a good deal of time, then I could start adding in some of the extras. And by extras I mean holiday or feast day plans.

One area I’m still thinking about how to best handle is concerning my older children’s planners. I think that I will still transfer the information from my planner to each of their planners on a weekly basis. That way I can still adjust as needed and be flexible.

Flexible Homeschool Planning

So, how do you plan for the entire year and still be flexible?

That was one of my big questions and one that has prevented me in the past from doing a big chunk of planning at once.  How I accommodated this is two-fold. Our Fridays in general are light days. Our second semester we are trying a six week on, one week off system. The week we are “off” can be a catch up week if necessary.

The work that is independent work for my children handwriting, phonics, spelling, I will be encouraging them to work ahead some weeks. I believe if they can see their work and where they are supposed to be that it will inspire them to stay on track. In our new house I have plans for a command center for our homeschool. I will share more on that soon, but you can see some of the ideas I have floating around in my head from my home organization board on Pinterest.

I could be dreaming though and we will see how the year goes!

A plan in place is good. It doesn’t have to be perfect to work and it’s okay to make modifications. It’s a tool, a guide, nothing is set in stone.

How are you planning for your homeschool year?