Have you ever found yourself ½ way through the school year (or school day!) juggling between keeping your preschooler busy, helping your middle school student write a last-minute paper for co-op, and finishing geometry with your 10^th grader?  Have you wondered about the merits of setting deadlines or how you will manage to finish the year?  Using some planning strategies before you begin can help you avoid work piling in April, helping the whole family enjoy homeschooling.

Before You Plan: Key Questions to Set Your Homeschool Year Up for Success

Before you plug subjects into calendars for each of your students, it’s a good idea to think through some questions…

• Do you have subjects that you can combine for different kids?  Maybe you all complete The Mystery of Science together, adapting as you go along.  Do you read novels together, complete unit studies across several grades, build your history timeline together? 
• Determine your curriculum for each subject for each student.  Do you still need to order grammar? Grab that math book you saved.  Take inventory of what you have and what you still need, so that when you plan, you can access everything.
• Decide how you’ll keep your plans.  Purchase an inexpensive notebook or print your plans on loose-leaf paper.  You might want to create an online calendar and give your student access. 
• Do some big-picture planning. How many days per week do you school?  What are your big goals? How many weeks do you have to work with in your school year? Allow for:
  • Holidays
  • Long and short breaks
  • Planning days
  • Catch-up days
  • Plan for unexpected events, like relatives visiting (or the stomach flu!)

Now Let’s Map It Out: Turning Curriculum into a Realistic Plan

• Plan for your own time.  What can your kids do themselves as opposed to requiring you for a few minutes.  Does your 4th grader need some one-on-one study skills work?  Do you need to sit by your 7th grader during language arts?
• Look over the curriculum. Are any items seasonal?  If your biology lesson 17 lesson about plants falls right in the middle of December, you might want to move it to spring, when your student can collect leaves for his project.  A lesson about insects where your student will start a butterfly garden wouldn’t work in Michigan in January.  Here is also where you might decide to leave out certain chapters or decide if there are any units you want to revise or drop.
• Make a list of any outside resources or supplies you will need.  Does your student attend co-op on Tuesdays?  Does one student take violin while another wants to learn guitar? Are there supplies you will need for science labs? Will soccer count for PE?
• Add bigger events that happen once or less frequently, like field trips to the zoo or a family vacation to colonial Williamsburg.
• Using a paper planner or online spreadsheet, provide space in a grid format for each student.  Plug in the subjects, putting core subject like English, math, science and history toward the top.  If you’re using a paper planner, write in pencil to provide yourself with a flexible framework.
• For a long-term approach, look at your curriculum’s end, planning backward and plugging in each unit to the appropriate week.  If you have 32 weeks in your school year and 39 history lessons, there will be some weeks you need to double up or adapt in a different way.
• Next look at the shorter term.  Consider plugging in hours for each subject to create a daily schedule or star subjects you’d like your students to complete before lunch.
• Involve your students if you choose. Participating in planning can help older kids with ownership, giving them a sense of responsibility for their work.  It can prepare your middles for doing it themselves someday and demonstrate to your littles that they’re important in the school day, too.

A Flexible Framework Makes for a Calmer Homeschool Year

Planning ahead provides a level of calm to your day and week and year.  Even if you don’t follow it to a T, it can still give you a framework for where you’d like to be in October, January, or April.  You won’t duplicate your workload, and you might not feel so frazzled about fitting everything in. Keep good notes of any changes you’ve made and at the end of the year, you can save your plans as records of what each of your students has done.