Where to Begin?
So, you’ve bought your curriculum and now you might be asking, “where do I begin?” Today, I want to share with you how I plan our homeschool year, going step by step.
Step 1: Deciding on a Schedule
This post may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a small commission when you click on and purchase something through my links. There is no extra cost to you and my opinions are 100% my own!
In this first step, I’m going to show you how I decide on our schedule. From my example, I know you will be able to tailor this to your own homeschool and create your perfect schedule.
Before you begin, you will want to know what are the laws in your state regarding homeschool and attendance. A great source to check out is hslda.org.
First I start by printing out a yearly calendar to cover the entire school year. This way I can see what holidays and other special days are on to help me plan out our year.
For us, I know that we are going to do 180 days or 36 weeks. I also know that to plan out our homeschool year we will begin school on the first Monday in August so that we can be finished by the end of April.
I take my yearly calendar and mark off the holidays that I know we absolutely are going to take off from school. On my calendar, I highlight those days. Then I circle the first Monday in August and begin counting to 180, while not adding the highlighted days. Once this is done, we have a complete outlook of our school work days.
Step 2: Decide on Work Load
Next on the list is to decide how much work needs to be done each day so that you will be finished with your core curriculum by the end date you have picked for your homeschool year.
For some curriculums this is super easy to do. However, for others, you will have to do a little math. Curriculums such as BJU, Abeka, or CLE will have days or lessons planned out for you. Therefore, if this is the case then you can jump to step 4 in this blog.
Although, if your curriculum does not plan it out for you then stick with me and I’ll walk you through how I plan out our homeschool year.
We use A.C.E. Curriculum, but the formula I’m going to give you will work for any book or curriculum.
Listed below is the formula:
Step 3: Planning out the Year
Once you know how many pages you need to average in each subject to complete it by the end of the school year, you can begin planning out what your student will be doing each day.
At this point, I pull out all of the Paces and go subject by subject and page by page. At the same time, I pull out the test that is located in the middle of the Pace and put them in their own folder for each subject.
I keep in mind how many average pages I need to do in each subject, while also keeping in mind the my child’s strengths and weaknesses in each subject. If I see a day would be particularly hard for him then I will adjust the work for that day while know those extra pages will need to be added onto another day at some point.
I use a form I created to write out what pages will be done on what day in each subject. I am sharing this form for you to use for your personal use.
You can download it here for Numbers, Excel, or PDF.
Step 4: Transferring Info to Planner
Now you have you done all the “hard” work to plan out the year, from this point on you are just going to take that info and make it nice and neat to access for during the school year.
Personally, I purchase a Student Planner from Amazon to transfer all the info from Step 3 into the planner. This makes it a much better presentation to reference on a daily basis, but also to see what is upcoming.
I highly recommend that you use a pencil when writing in the student planner. Every single year I have had to adjust our calendar in some way due to various life events that were unforeseeable.
Step 5: Creating Student Weekly Goal Card
Yay!! You made it to the last and final step to plan your homeschool year. Just like step 4, in this step you will just be transferring information. Since we use A.C.E. curriculum, they have their own student weekly goal cards. Therefore, I use those to transfer my information from my planner onto a goal card.
 |
ACE School of Tomorrow PACEs Homeschool Record-Keeping Set Keep track of your child’s progress in their PACEs with this ACE Record-Keeping Set. A master record sheet provides room to record test scores and percentages and attendance; a “permanent record” form tracks achievement and aptitude test scores, grade levels, prescribed PACE numbers, credit earned, ranking, attendance, and room for student information. Also included is a colorful student progress chart with accompanying stickers; goal card charts (20) and stickers; and progress report card for two semesters. |
This makes it super easy for my son to know what work he will be required to do each day, but also give him an outlook of what is coming up in the near future.
Step-by-Step Video
I really hope this helps encourage you when planning out your homeschool year. As always, I’d love to how you plan your homeschool year.
Be encouraged! You’ve got this, because He has got you.
