How do you plan for your school year?

At the beginning of every year I do a general timeline for each subject - to get an idea of how much to cover each day. Then I plan (detailed) 6 weeks at a time. This lets me reevaluate and see if we’re moving the right speed with the right curriculum. – This being said though, I only fill in the upcoming week in my planner - just in case we get off track.

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I normally do week to week planning. I am starting to get the hang of planning now that It has been one year of HS. Last year the evaluator said she thought I needed to relax and enjoy more. I was so focused on making sure I was doing enough for my dyslexic daughter that I was constantly stressed. This year I have tried to be more flexible and go with the flow. I do wonder if I am doing enough. I think I am, and I see growth and I am really enjoying school this year (minus the 10 weeks of morning/all day sickness) haha

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This is our first year of homeschooling and I spent a lot of time planning out the year before it even started. I learned as the year went that my plans changed a lot. I will probably still do a lot of planning in the summer but leave off some of the specifics. I really like to have a plan but I know now that things can change quickly. I even changed curriculum for a couple subjects and so that made some of my planning worthless.

As I’m reading all of y’all’s posts, I’m realizing I drop the ball on this one!! I most of the time plan the night before (printing out letter of the week material–thank you, Erika!) and sometimes I don’t even get that far:O
I am just starting, though, as my oldest is 4.5. Looks like I have a lot of learning to do!

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To start, I spend quite a bit of time during the summer organizing curriculum and putting together goals for what we plan to accomplish during the year. I then break those goals up and focus on each of them during the course of the year. I seem to start the year strong and then I usually end up a little more ‘relaxed’ as the year progresses. I do need to try to get myself back on a good track this time of year. A good planning book might help!

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Would you share some of your experience over here on my post?

Homeschool Conventions

I was wondering some of the same things.

Thanks!

Right now I do a week at a time. Some things that I have planned end up being too easy for my daughter, so we end up changing things around to see what works for her.

We just implemented a 6 week on and week 7 is Catch Up/Off. At the beginning of the school year I planned everything thing out for those first 6 weeks and then planned the next 6 weeks from there so I was able to see where were at and could change things if needed. I have like this schedule so far and will probably keep it.

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I have done it differently each year and honestly haven’t been able to follow the “plan” that I have laid out yet. So hopeful with each year we are finding more and more of our groove. :slight_smile: Of course adding another child (out of our 5) into the mix of school could be part of the continued flex needed in our plans.

I really like the idea of year round schooling but we need a break! My favorite is (at least the idea of it) 6weeks on 1 week off and then we take a longer break before we officially move to the next grade.

I also like everything to be laid out before we start but like I said above I seem to boycott those plans for some reason…looking forward to reading all these posts and finding some help!! :smiley:

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Last year I planned on a weekly basis, but decided that I wanted to plan the whole year out for this year. So I did that last Spring for this year. It’s a very basic overview for 180 days - not detailed plans. I’m starting to plan for next year right now and as I’m adding my son for Kindergarten, I’ve decided to make my plans to show what I want to accomplish in the 36 weeks of the school year as opposed to what I want to do every day of the week. Once those plans are finished, then I will pull various activities, etc. to help us meet those goals/correspond to the curriculum.

A helpful hint: several of the curricula we use are just open up and use it so it seems redundant to write daily plans that say “Do Lesson 1, Do Lesson 2, etc.” I put a Post It in those books and then just move it to the next day’s lesson when we’re done with today.

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Originally, I would come up with the curriculum topics for the year and then do daily plans for the month. Then the daily plans went down to weekly. This year we’ve had so many unexpected things enter into our lives, combined with my wanting to make sure we cover a topic until we’ve completed it in a way that fosters that the information is retained and that’s not stressful for the kids (or me), that I knew I needed to revise my planning again. Even during the year it’s been reshaped. I think it helped that I finally came to terms with not being bound by a traditional regimen and finding what truly worked best for us and not necessarily for anyone else! I still planned out skills and the main topics we wanted to cover for the year. Then I created a daily plan for each topic, more of a sequence of what would be done (the book to be read, activities and such). Then I’d gather all the plans, and write our daily plans as more of our daily accomplishments. I check off each sequential activity as we complete it in its entirety. This way if something seems to be taking a little longer to complete, or it’s spurred additional questions we can continue; or if something just isn’t working, or someone’s unavailable for learning that topic that day, we can set it aside for the next day or extend it as necessary without erasing and reconfiguring a whole schedule. Plus I get the bonus of not looking at those uncompleted lessons and reworking them, and seeing it in a negative light. I get to see all we’ve accomplished and assess how everyone’s doing each day. It’s been working for us so far!

I’m new to homeschooling & will be officially starting this fall. My plan is to do an overall plan for the whole school year, knowing that there is always a possibility that things might change. I am really enjoying reading everyone’s responses to this topic. It helps so much to learn from everyone’s experiences. I don’t know that many people who homeschool, so this community is a great blessing :slight_smile:

I do a big chunk of planning in the summer before we start, then I spend about 30 minutes each Sunday evening planning for that week.

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Since we virtual school for our core subjects the planning is done for us for the whole year. Yay! Our other subjects get planned a month in advance…if I’m all together that is! And planning is ALWAYS done in pencil!

I’m new to homeschooling, just getting started with preschool. I’m probably going to do planning week by week initially.

my oldest is in first grade and i’m getting better at planning but most of the time, we just open the book and do the next lesson. Anything else added in is usually planned on the weekend before the week.

We are preparing for our first year, and I’m having trouble wrapping my head around planning. It feels weird to me to write things down that are already written in the lesson plans. So I’m not sure what to do. :frowning:

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I plan out the entire year. I agree with Erica that it makes the entire year run smoother. It takes away the stress of not being prepared for a special project or not having the right supplies needed.

I may have missed it, but do you have a link for your homeschool tracking software? Is it Mac compatible?

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I’m just getting started with preschool so I’m looking for any advice I can get.