How I Plan for a New Homeschool Year | Mom of 10

hi it's Sherry from our life homeschooling and I want to take you along with me today and show you how I'm going to be planning for our next H school year as I show you what I do to plan for a new home school year you'll want to stick around for the very last thing that I do it is the most important thing and you don't want to miss it [Music] if you're new to my channel my name is Sherry I'm a Christian homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to my high school sweetheart we've been married for 24 years and we are starting our 15th year of homeschooling I started this channel as a way to encourage other homeschool moms that are a couple years behind to help you stay the course because I believe we are raising the Next Generation right here in our homes and the job we're doing is so important the first thing that I want to say before I start any of this is that you can start your H school year simply you can have something special planned but you don't have to you can just start you can pick up where you left off and just open your books and begin again if you have a routine and you have something for your kids to do for Reading Writing and math if you have something that you can read aloud to them you can start there and then keep going and adding to it as you move along you're going to learn as you go homeschooling is a lifestyle and so you don't have to have these great special things planned for the first day if you have something fun planned that's fine but if not that's okay too we have 10 kids our oldest is 19 we're starting our 15th year of homeschooling so I have been in baby mode basically since we started I've been either pregnant had a baby we always have a toddler so some years we started and I had had a busy summer I know a couple times I was due with a baby in the first month of our school year starting we had lots going on and so I didn't always have something great to start with um I didn't always have a great plan sometimes I didn't buy all the things I needed but it was okay I just started I picked a day to start with and we began we opened our books and that's really what homeschooling is just opening up the books again and starting where you left off it's also a lot of practical life skills so when you think that you're not getting as many things done as you want to you you are if you're bringing your kids alongside of you in all that you're work the work you're doing throughout the day there have been some Summers over the years that have been a little lighter maybe we had less going on and I was able to plan something special for that first day and that was always nice but it's not necessary this year has been a lighter summer for me and I've had a little bit more time to think about things so that's been nice and I've enjoyed it I'm not feeling quite as much pressure I've been able to get a couple things done ahead of time which is also nice so just remember as you begin that you can just start you can keep it really simple and it's still going to be very good the first thing I do to start planning for a new hom school year is to clean out clean out all our homeschool spaces and if you watch the video from last week that's just what I did I cleaned out my kids work boxes I organized our library I went through um some of I didn't show this in the video but I've gone through some of the wardrobes we keep our homeschool things um and just organized everything threw away a ton of stuff and that's my first step I have to start with something clean first of all the second thing is to inventory what supplies I'm going to need for the new school year and this is for us surprisingly a lot less than most people would think over the years we've accumulated things the more you homeschool you accumulate a little bit more every year and where we are now starting our 15th year of homeschooling I am buying very little I'm not buying much curriculum at all I'll be buying um a few Math workbooks for my kids because those are consumable I like to buy when I have the time ahead to think of it I like to buy each of my kids a new book picture book chapter book doesn't even have to be new it could be just new to us I can find them used places something for them to open on the first day that's kind of a fun tradition we've had but again not something that I've necessarily done every year not something you have to do my older kids are in a co-op a drop off Co-op where they get all of their most of their High School subjects and so I need to look at what textbooks they're going to need for their classes now our oldest son has gone all the way through he graduated and so when he went through we acquired a lot of the textbooks that I'm using for my other kids so I just need to look through see if we have the books that they need um some of them are picking different classes than he did so I'll need to buy some of those things but it's it's not a whole lot this year I did do a little back to school shopping if you want to call it that I like to start when we start again it is nice to have a few things that are new but I think that you're going to be surprisingly underwhelmed with how little we buy how little you actually need to start homeschooling one thing I buy that I don't have here I have some of these here and I'm actually going to just work on organizing some of these while I do the video with you one thing we bought ahead of time on Amazon was pencils we buy a huge box of pencils and this lasts us through the whole year I buy a certain brand because I like to have good ones um another thing we invested in years ago was a really good pencil sharpener electric pencil sharpener ER I went I can't even tell you how many years we went with just a Turn Style pencil sharpener and I had no strong boards on my main floor that I wanted to screw that into on the wall so we had it down in our basement where there were some posts so the kids had to go down to the basement sharpen their pencils and um I don't know why I went through that hassle for so many years finally bought an electric pencil sharpener if you don't have an electric pencil sharpener it is one of the best little perks that I've ever spent money on for myself in homeschooling definitely need an electric pencil sharpener so we buy pencils um I went to Walmart and I found just a couple of things um I always buy these half inch notebooks I bought seven of these one for each of my kids that are in school this year this is for their portfolios their end of the year portfolios and then I also um Walmart had these notebooks for 45 cents each I bought 10 of them because some of the kids still have ones from last year that are pretty empty we'll pick up on those but I bought some new ones I'm wondering if I should have bought more um but at least we have 10 to start with I can go back and get some more later um another thing that I have here I bought a couple packs of black Sharpie markers ours are always running out so that's important to have another thing that we use regularly is a whiteboard in morning time I use a whiteboard almost every day and so I love these colored dry erase markers and um those also we go through pretty quickly have to remember not to let them out where little kids can reach them leave the Caps off and then they dry out um I bought a new pack of Staples and paper Clips um just nice to have extra I bought some eraser Toppers because our a lot of times our pencils will last but the erasers won't last so these are nice to have and then I also bought um I always buy a brand new pack of crayons throw all the rest out once a year and buy a new pack of crayons and I'm going to be putting them into this little pencil holder that I got got for like a dollar I think at Walmart one other thing that I bought that I don't have here that my kids really were excited about which is kind of silly they're very easy to please they each got their own pair of really nice scissors I spent a little bit of money got them some nice scissors put their names on each of them and they're going to keep them in their work boxes because in our house we can never find scissors kids are always taking my kitchen scissors we've bought scissors over the years and them all in one place but then they get lost so now they each have their own they have their name on it if it gets lost then that's they've lost their pair of scissors so they're responsible for keeping track of it and then the last thing I bought is um some colored pencils and I bought I we have a lot already this is just kind of to refresh some of the ones and add some new colors to especially the main colors that we usually run out of so that's it for us for what I purchased this is just to kind of refresh some of our supplies you don't have to spend a lot of money to start a new homeschool year the third thing that I do to get ready for a new H school year is to plan out our routine to look at our routine and see what's missing so if you've watched any of my videos from last year our routine is fourfold we have morning time then and we do chores and housework which I consider I tell my kids this is your first schoolwork next we have independent work so for this they each have their own checklist and they just go down through each thing on their checklist and until they're finish then um we do break for lunch and outside time the last thing that we do the fourth thing we do is read aloud together for morning time which is the first thing on our routine um I already planned out our morning time I did that over the summer I made our simple morning time notebook it's something that I shared with you last year I'm sharing with you again you can find it over on the blog rli homeschool.com I'll link it below we follow a lot of amble side online so if you are Charlotte Mason if you are classical education if you love amble side online um this is a great tool for you to use um in it you'll find composer study artist study folk songs hymn study memory work um just lots of things more than that there's 31 pages and um so that I've already done I did that early this year because I wanted to make it available to you that is finished the second thing in our routine is chores and I updated our chore chart a couple weeks ago so that's already done and I don't have to look at that the third thing that we do is are independent work so the kids have checklists this I haven't started yet I will probably be bringing you along for that process maybe next week when I'm putting their checklist together when I make my kids checklists I usually have them each sit down with me at Le especially the older ones sit down with me if they have classes from Co-op that's the first thing that goes in there um and then next we just talk about what do you want to learn this year what's important to you I also do a lot of amble side online suggestions that is what I consider the spine of my curriculum I did a blog post a couple years ago on the essential amble side books that I include in our home school and uh so you can look at the books amble side is a feast it's a lot if you try to do it all um I think you're going to be overwhelmed so I've kind of narrowed it down to the ones that I think are most important when my kids are younger so I guess like sixth grade and down we pretty much follow amble side online um as our core and then when my kids are older so middle school high school we kind of shift more to an interest-led style of learning because there's just so much that they want to try and explore and it's important for them to do that to learn what they're good at and to just kind of go in in certain directions I also did um a checklist video at the end of last school year I think I showed everyone my kids checklist and this was from grade 10 all the way down to kindergarten everyone's checklist so it kind of gave a good snapshot of what our day looks like at different levels so if you want to look at that I'll definitely link that for you the fourth thing in our routine is our read aloud and so sometimes I'll think ahead of time about what books I want to read to the kids throughout the year but not always I haven't thought about it too much this year um I like to ask the kids for suggestions and I usually do an older kid read aloud and a younger Kid read aloud so if I get to it then I'll go ahead and pick out some read aloud books that we're going to do in the afternoon but if not it's okay to just start thinking about that after your school year starts and I want to say again that there have been years where on the first day of school I was not prepared I had something for them to do for Reading Writing and math I had a book to read to them and on that first day I started um that evening I ordered some of the things that we needed for maybe their math coming up I started writing out their checklist and then just each day I added a little more to it so I have an always had everything ready for my kids on that first day of school and that is okay because learning is a lifestyle and that's what homeschooling is for us so on that first day everything's coming back they're opening things back up again and I'm remembering oh yeah I wanted to do this or oh we need to make sure that we write this out and figure out how we're going to do that and and it's okay to do that on your first couple days of school your first week or two of school to just start your planning as you're going the last thing that I do to plan for a new homeschool year and really it's the first thing it's something that's Forefront in my mind in my heart is to pray for our kids and to pray for our homeschool year as a a mom as a parent it is overwhelming to think of raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord preparing them for the world that they have to live in teaching them truth goodness and Beauty Jesus said without me you can do nothing and so what we're doing with our kids really is of little Eternal value if we are not drawing our strength from him leaning into him asking for his wisdom praying for strength um sometimes I'll have we'll have struggles with our kids and we don't know what to do and it can be really hard especially when you get some teenagers and just stopping and asking the Lord how can I pray for this child how show me what we can do differently that would be better that would be a better solution show me how this child learns and how we can meet his or her needs asking for the Lord's help this is the place where we need to start our home school Year I hope this gives you some ideas and gets your brain thinking some of you have probably already started homeschooling um um and maybe many of you are with me we start in two weeks and all I've done so far is clean things out and I have their morning time planned the rest of it I haven't done and I'm not stressing about it because we just do a little bit every day and I know that you don't have to have everything just so or a certain way or perfect to start we can start and get going and add to it as we're going so thanks for watching I do one video a week on home schooling encouragement for everyday moms if you like this content I encourage you to watch the video I did last week as I Was preparing for a new home school year cleaning out and just changing some of the decor around here to make our home a more inviting place to learn thanks for watching I'll see you next week