How To Plan Your Homeschool Year

Mom, are you really sure about this?

I have heard this question a lot the last few weeks:  Am I ready for school?  The short answer?  Yes.  The long answer?  Eeek!!!!

While everything is bought and sitting on my bookshelf looking shiny and new, I'm not sure if I will ever truly be ready for school .  In light of this, I thought I'd share how I go about planning for the homeschool year.


Step 1. Scour every curriculum website known to man, read through every curriculum catalog that finds its way into the mail box cover to cover even if it's for something that you won't need until your kids are in high school when your oldest is only going into fourth grade, pay diligent attention to others' curriculum choices while visiting various online homeschool forums, question all of the people you know in real life who homeschool on what they are doing, and then repeat.

Step 2. Make a choice after months of prayer and research.

Step 3. Change your mind after learning about another great curriculum.

Step 4. Go back to the original curriculum choice.

Step 5. Ask Hubby his opinion when hitting an impasse between two choices.

Step 6. Go with the other one.

Step 7. Buy the curriculum quickly before you change your mind again.

Step 8. Receive your boxes of curriculum, ooh and aah over them, then put them on the bookshelf for the fall.

Step 9. Now that it is March, finish up the current school year.

Step 10. Now that it is July, pull all the new books out to look through.  Realize you have made no provisions for covering writing and spelling.

Step 11. Go back and repeat steps 1-8.

Step 12. Now that it is August, it's time to get serious about planning for the school year.  Pull out all the school books and actually read the first few chapters to know what you are doing.  Pull out the computer software and install the programs on the computer so they're ready to go.

Step 13. Endure a week of your four year old begging to be able to do school on the computer, too.  Give in and buy her an online subscription to Explode the Code reading program.

Step 14. Make up a schedule to fit all that curriculum into a five day school week.

Step 15. Now that all of that is finished, pray that you haven't forgotten anything, that all the subjects are covered, and that all of the choices you made will actually work for your kids.

Step 16. Take the next three weeks off to recover before starting the school year.