Homeschool Planning 101

During the summer, I like to take time to refresh our homeschool plans and think ahead for the next school year. This can go in a lot of directions. I may consider what new things I can incorporate for my kids as they advance to the next school year, plus how to divide our curriculum into days, weeks, and months.

Homeschool planning can feel daunting and overwhelming, especially if you are new to homeschooling or you have multiple children to plan for. Here are some strategies for planning your homeschool year, plus how I plan in my homeschool and the tools I use.

In this blog post:

Strategies for planning your homeschool year
How I plan our homeschool year
Why I love our customizable homeschool planner

Strategies for planning your homeschool year

Consider any previous school experiences

If you are new to homeschooling and are transitioning from public school, consider where your child finished the previous school year, including what subjects they enjoyed or excelled in, and any area you would like to add, modify, or improve.

If this is your child’s first year of school and you are new to homeschooling, think about what you want to accomplish in the school year. Of course, this will be a lot of trial-and-error, but while you learn, create a vision of what you want your school to be like, or consider the style of homeschooling that resonates the most with you.

If you are continuing your homeschool journey, look back at your homeschool planner or curriculum and review what you planned versus how you carried it out. Evaluate if you planned enough time for your priorities or curriculum, or if some elements took longer than anticipated. Learn from your previous experience and replicate or make any adjustments that are helpful to you.

Plan your school calendar

Before dividing things up, decide how you want to go about your school year. You may follow a traditional school schedule, such as from August to May, or homeschool year-round without a long break. This is a good time to consult with your state’s requirements for homeschooling, which may include a required number of school days per year.

Plan your Daily Rhythm

One of the joys of homeschooling is spending your days in a way that honors your values, your family, and your learning goals for each child. Think about what you want your days and weeks to look like. If you want to leave room for field trips or extracurricular activities, this will impact the time you spend doing traditional school lessons.

Related: Take the Homeschool Style Quiz

For example, in my homeschool most weeks we spend four days doing school lessons, and on Fridays, we meet with a group and spend time in nature hiking or doing other outdoor activities. Because this is important to my family, we focus the first part of our week on working through our school curriculum so we have space for our community group on Friday.

You can also consider what you want your days to look like. Will your children do school lessons in the morning or the afternoon? Do you have other commitments during the week, like a job or other responsibilities you need to carve out time for? If you have infants or toddlers in the mix, will you structure your lessons or read-aloud time during naps or other specific times?

Every family’s priorities are different, so give yourself the flexibility to do what works best for you, plus the permission to adjust and change as needed.

Here are some other tips for planning out your days:

Decide on your priorities: Instead of trying to do everything every day, decide what your non-negotiables are for each day. Some days you will get through everything you have planned, but when your plans do not go accordingly, focus on your top priorities and leave the rest for later.
Consider scheduling your days in blocks: Instead of breaking up your school hours by subject, you can structure your daily schedule by subjects you can do together and subjects your children can do independently. You may involve all of your children in family-style learning, and then everyone can adjust to the skills and subjects they work through on their own. Then you may leave space for other activities like read-alouds, meal times, outdoor play, home responsibilities, and more.
Allow additional time for changes: Most days will not go as planned. Some subjects may go by quickly while others will take more time than expected. Allow space for flexibility and changes so that your schedule can ebb and flow with what your family needs each day.
Accommodate the needs of each sibling: If you are homeschooling a family with multiple children, you may consider tailoring your schedule to allow you to meet the needs of each child. This could be as simple as doing school during the time of day when your children are most attentive and focused, or it could include blocking out the specific curriculum needs of each child. This may address how to bring your younger children into the subjects the older ones are learning, so you can include them too.
Adjust as needed: I make changes to our daily rhythm all the time. Permit yourself to modify your daily rhythm as needed. This can be as simple as changing your daily rhythm for different seasons or curricula, or anything else that crops up.

Related: Overview: Daily Rhythm Bundle

Set goals for your family

The planning stage is a great time to consider any goals you have for yourself or your children, and the steps required to meet these goals.

Goal-setting is specific to each family. This can be as simple as a subject you want to study from start to finish, or a project you want your children to complete. It could be an extracurricular activity you want your children to participate in or a skill you want to develop. From there you can decide if this is something you will focus on daily or weekly, and where it will fit into your schedule.

How I plan our homeschool year

During the summer I look ahead and make choices for the upcoming year. This is a big picture look at the curriculum we will study and our overall plan for the year.

As we go through the year, each month I will review where we are according to the plan I set up for the year and modify as needed. If we need to spend more time on a subject before moving on, we do. If we need to swap out a curriculum that is better suited for my children, I will. If we need to mix up our daily rhythm to meet the needs of my family, we do. My goal is to break up our days into a manageable workload that is attuned to the needs of my children and our family rhythm. I also leave room for the things we love, like allowing plenty of time for free play and time outdoors.

Here are some things I do to plan and evaluate what we will do in our homeschool.

Curriculum research

A couple of times a year, I do curriculum research for all areas of our homeschool and look ahead the next six months or more. I may download free lessons to look through or go to the local homeschool consignment store to thumb through some books. I also try to find curriculum reviews and flip throughs online.

For most of our subjects, we do family-style learning, meaning I don’t use something different for each child. I go through each subject for each child and evaluate where they are at and what needs to come next. Do they need to switch curriculums or do I need to add something else? If they are ready to move onto the next level in a curriculum we are using, I go ahead and purchase it. Of course, we differentiate for some subjects, like math.

I also think about what other areas of study I want to include in the upcoming year or go deeper in. If I want to explore learning a musical instrument or foreign language, I search for resources for that.

I try to narrow in on decisions one or two months before beginning anything totally new so I have plenty of time to gather books, supplies, and get familiar with the curriculum.

Calendar and Daily Rhythm planning

I look ahead for the next six months and pencil in any vacations or school breaks to help me plan around them. I may rework our daily rhythm at this time to better fit our needs or the seasons. I also prepare any new cards we need for our visual schedule.

Related: Our Homeschool Daily Rhythm through the years.

Big picture curriculum scheduling

In our family, we practice year-round schooling and I don’t stick to curriculum schedules very closely. I tailor everything to fit our needs, interests, and to mesh well with everything else we’re choosing to study. We may finish a resource in six months instead of the scheduled nine or stretch it out for nearly two years. Once or twice a year I look ahead at the curriculum we are using and think through what timeline will be best to move forward with each one.

Monthly calendar and lesson planning

Once a month I look at our family calendar and all of the curriculum that we are using and plan it out in my Homeschool Planner. I write everything in pencil so that it can easily be edited. I keep this very general and add in page numbers or other details later.

I also reserve the next month’s books at the library or make book purchases. I write a master supply list for odds and ends I will need for the coming weeks as well and order supplies or get prepared to pick them up in person.

If any of the curriculum we are using requires me to print, bind, or laminate anything I will do that as well. Sometimes I do this for a full season or year, depending on the curriculum. I like to have everything fully prepped so that each week I can just open the curriculum, glance over the lesson and jump into lessons.

Weekly calendar and lesson planning

Each weekend I spend about 30 minutes looking ahead at the week for each curriculum that we use. In my Homeschool Planner, I write each day’s lesson and pencil in page numbers, lesson numbers, or more specifics. Often we won’t make it through everything or go further in a book than I wrote, so I just edit as I go day-to-day.

I gather the books for the week and put them in an easy-to-reach spot near our homeschool table. I double check that we have all of the materials we need for lessons that week and pick anything up that I missed in my monthly planning or that is a perishable item (if we are baking that week, for example).

Each week I clean our Morning Time menus and insert the new week’s display sheets. We use the Morning Time Bundle and Student Sheets from Treehouse Nature Study in our Morning Time Menus. This covers calendar, time, and weather, poetry, picture study, folk songs, and hand rhymes. Each of those subjects has a display sheet we refer to.

Related: Our Homeschool Morning Time

I also take out display sheets from the previous week and file them away for another use. I put away any loose work my children completed over the last week, like copywork. Each child has a binder with dividers for each subject area, so I use a three-hole punch and organize them in the appropriate section.

Why I love our customizable Homeschool Planner

Using a homeschool planner is essentail to planning out the days, weeks, and months of our homeschool year. I developed the customizable Homeschool Planner as a simple and beautiful way to meet my needs as a busy homeschool mom of multiple children.

The redesigned 2024-2025 Homeschool Planner includes yearly, monthly, and weekly calendars as well as space for daily lesson plans. The planner runs from August 2024 – July 2025 so it is an excellent choice for families who homeschool year-round. The planner is available as both a spiral-bound hard copy as well as a digital, editable version.

Here are the elements I love:

I love so many things about our homeschool planner, including the:

Attendance Tracker
Monthly Calendar
Daily Lesson Planner

Attendance Tracker

This simple year-at-a-glance attendance tracker will make it easy to mark off the days your child participates in school. I just color in the days we do lessons for personal record keeping. For multiple children, you could split the square and color code.

This is also helpful if your state requires you to track your attendance.

Monthly Calendar

Each month fromAugust 2024 – July 2025 to has its own monthly calendar which I use to mark important dates, holidays, and events when I am long term planning. Each monthly spread opposite a blank notes page so you can make notes of anything specific to the month.

Daily Lesson Planner

I fine tuned this through trial and error using it with my own children and love where it has landed.

The weekly planner calendar includes sections for each subject so you can plan each day of the week by subject and visually see what you will do each day. This way, I love that I can see how many lessons I plan to work through in the week, plus any special or unique activities for each day.

Another way to use organize this would be to use one row per child and write in each subject each child is using.

The planner is laid out with columns Monday through Friday so you can plan your week at a glance, plus sections for the weekend and other weekly plans or checklists. Each section has useful checkboxes for marking off activities as you go about your homeschool day. If you purchase the digital version, you can edit any field on this page and apply it to each week.

Hardcopy version

We offer planners in hard copy for those mamas who want something easy and ready to go. I personally love this option because printing and binding can be time-consuming and expensive if not done at home. The planners are professionally printed on a commercial-grade printing press on white matte paper. The front and back covers are glossy laminate cardstock so they will hold up over a year of use. The planner is bound with white metal wire-o binding to provide the strongest, highest quality binding.

How to edit the customizable, digital version

Here are the steps for editing the customizable, digital download:

Open file in Adobe Acrobat Reader (Free application)
Scroll to weekly lesson plans where you will see the editable fields in blue.
Type in subjects or curriculum. Anything you type in will be autofilled to the subsequent weeks.
When your planner is customized to your liking, print at home or have it spiral-bound at your local printer. If your lesson plans change frequently, you could just print a few months at a time and then revise as needed.

I hope you’ve found this post helpful and informative! If you have any questions about homeschool planning, drop them in the comments below. Shop all of our homeschool planning resources below.