Planning your School Year

This is one of the biggest challenges for me each year, and I often re-invent the wheel on this one.  Trying to plan out what we will learn when, for the whole year, and then bite-sizing it down to each week/day…. that often has me stumped and frustrated.

If you have purchased curriculum that already lays this out your year’s plan for you, then you are one step ahead.  🙂  I tend to be very eclectic, not ever fully satisfied with any one packaged curriculum, and I piece things together from many different sources.  So part of this is my own problem, just being me.  HA!  

To plan the whole year in a general sense, I usually start with a one-page summary chart that has 30 or 32 lines  — depending on how many days a week I want to homeschool…. if I homeschool 5 days a week, 30 weeks is adequate.  If I homeschool four days a week, I use the 32 line chart, and expect to have to add field trip days or let the academics overflow a little bit after those 32 weeks are done… or give myself permission to rabbit trail for a few extra days — that gets me to my 148 days that we have promised the government that we will provide education.  (Honestly, my kids are learning every day, which is WAY more than 148 days, but as far as “academic lessons” that were pre-planned, that’s how I visualize accomplishing it.)

Then on this chart I put my subjects as column headers, and try to dream out what sub-topics will need to be addressed during each week, trying to think of the natural flow of the whole course, and also which writing assignments or art projects or read-alouds might fit well with which history topics, etc. so that they can be scheduled for the same week.  (For example, if we are studying the Civil War in history, I want to read biographies about Harriett Tubman and Abraham Lincoln in read-alouds, and for art, I want to show them Matthew Brady’s photographs of that era, as he documented the war with the “new technology” of the day.  And I want them to learn “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Dixie” in music.)

After I have this accomplished (which takes longer than I usually think it will), then I turn my attention to our ideal weekly schedule.  I say IDEAL, because we all know something will happen to mess it all up.  But I plan out if I want to do each subject each day (usually NO), and how to bring my theory into a possible reality.

Every year, our weekly/daily schedule looks different.  Sometimes I had to adjust for a nursing baby (use very small chunks of time throughout the day).  Other times, it was a high school student taking classes in the morning or afternoon.  (Get as many of the GROUP subjects accomplished while they are home.)  If you are working a job on top of homeschooling, you have to consider your work schedule/demands as well.  

My friend Laura shared her schedule with me many years ago, when she had several little ones who would be needing her attention as they learned.  Homeschooling was her “full-time job” and she poured all of her time and energy into that stage of their lives.  She was ultra-organized and had figured out an actual time-block for everything, and how the older kids could entertain the younger ones on a rotating basis while she made the rounds.  It’s based on “Managers of the Their Homes” which teaches a similar organizational style for planning your entire day. 

I would usually attempt something that was tied to the clock, but fail miserably and just end up running around like a deranged woman yelling “We are BEHIND SCHEDULE!!” which isn’t how I wanted our homeschool days to look.  Eventually I adopted a basic routine (and if we didn’t start at the exact same moment every day, I accepted it) that involved eating breakfast (and as they have become teens, they usually prioritize extra sleep over breakfast), household chores, group time and individual time.  Because I taught them Bible, history, science, art, music, and read-alouds all together (GROUP TIME) in the living room, that was usually our first academic time block of the day and almost always lasted over an hour.  But we didn’t hit all of those subjects every day… I had a list of what I wanted to accomplish for the week, and I worked my way through that, instead of micro-planning each day.  Individual subjects (INDIVIDUAL TIME) were more self-paced.  Each kid was working his/her way through a math curriculum, a language arts workbook, and a reading comprehension program, and it was more like a study hall, where they got their books/workbooks out and asked for help as they needed it.  

All of this sounds super sweet and beautiful, and we did have super-sweet, beautiful moments.  We also had moments where a disrespectful attitude or comment landed a child in the bathroom (our place of discipline) for the duration of a group lesson.  We had tears (oh my goodness, the tears) as they hit a concept they thought was unlearnable.  We had clinginess, as they insisted that I sit RIGHT NEXT TO THEM as they attempted every single math problem.  We had avoidance, as they would prolong any break I gave to them so that they wouldn’t have to actually finish school for the day.  I’m afraid all of this is normal, and these issues don’t have easy solutions.  Often the problem lies in the heart…. a weakness of character that needs to be addressed, but that was also one of our main goals of homeschooling — raising kids who love God and choose His ways cheerfully.  I can’t tell you how many times the academic lesson was bumped because THIS ATTITUDE or THIS BEHAVIOR needed to be dealt with immediately.  Habit-forming takes time and attention.  

Anyway… below, I’ve included a YouTube video that explains all this even more (and find the PDF handouts under Ready to Homeschool, scroll down to Week 20 – Weekly Schedules). This post is just me explaining how MY BRAIN attempts to tackle this part of the homeschooling task.  But YOU have to do YOU because your situation is guaranteed different than mine.  I’m simply hoping to be helpful!  🙂