Simple & Flexible Homeschool Planning for the Whole Year | My Entire Homeschool Planning Process

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Wockway. I'm Jessica. Today's video we are going to be talking about the six steps that I take each and every home school year to big picture plan for the year. Now big picture planning. This is going to be very generic, very broad. If you are looking to plan your homeschool down to the week and have it colorcoded in this beautiful spreadsheet of what you're going to do for each day and each week, this is not the video for you. That is not how I plan. It would stress me out because life happens and it would never line up and that would drive me absolutely baddy. But if you're looking for something a lot looser with a tiny bit of structure that hopefully won't stress you out but will still give you goals to work towards, this video is for you. Now, before I actually start with these six steps, there is something that I do each and every summer, and that is what I call homeschool professional development. I like to read books about homeschool over the summer, but I like to read ones that remind me of like, for example, our vision. And so, I have pulled some that I'm going to share that I have read or will read each and every summer because I love that they remind me kind of what our vision is. And it keeps me grounded because this time of year I feel like people are sharing their curriculum choices and their back to school halls. And don't get me wrong, I do the same thing because everybody loves watching them. But even me after homeschooling all the years that I've homeschooled can sometimes get deterred by the shiny new thing or um feel overwhelmed because somebody else has picked 12 different things and that's just not how we homeschool. But I will sometimes let that get in my head and want to plan or buy and do more. So, the book that I read each and every year, no matter what, before I start planning and prepping is Teaching from Rest by Sarah McKenzie. I love this book and it kind of always brings me back to like before I even start looking at curriculum and planning and prepping and reminding me that that stuff really isn't even all that important. Along those same lines is More Than Enough by Cara Anderson. This one reminds me that homeschool isn't always easy and that no matter what I choose and what I do, I am more than enough. Um, and I'm gonna figure it out because I'm her mom and this is just what we do. These two pretty much read them every summer. They're short, they're quick, but they pack a punch in that like fresh, refreshing way of reminding me why we do this and reminding me that like I don't need all the things and I don't need to freak out. Like we're going to figure it out. I also really like to read homeschool gone wild. This kind of reminds me closer to like the unschooling feel and that maybe I don't necessarily even need a curriculum for everything. It always reminds me that I can homeschool through experiences and books and games and I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is why we homeschool." The unhurried homeschooler. Again, this is one of those like short packs a big punch. Just kind of reminds me to take a breath. We don't need so many hours. We don't need so many things. the Brave Learner. Obviously, this one is fantastic. A little bit longer, but it has a ton of resources in it. And again, it just kind of reminds us that we don't need all the curriculum and all the stuff, and we can just like have fun while we're homeschooling. And then the two that I added this year that I'm not quite done reading, but I think that they will be ones that I return to each and every homechool is homeschooling. You're doing it right just by doing it. Again, that reminder that we're just doing it right by doing it. and the joy of slow. Again, just remembering to slow down, which is what I've been trying to do this year. Uh Emily's going into eighth grade. It's our last year of middle school. It's the last year before high school. And so, I actually have not even started planning. Like, I'm going to tell you what our steps are and what I do every year. But I'm telling you them because they're the steps I do every year, not because they're the steps I've done. In fact, I have done none of this except start my reading because I'm just soaking up summer. like I am just enjoying the slow and enjoying the time with her. I'm not trying to rush. But that being said, let's talk about the steps that I take after I've read after I am prepared to like plan because I'm in the right frame of mind. The first thing that I do is set goals. Now, I like to sit down with Emily and ask her what she would like to learn for the year. What is she interested in? What does she feel like didn't go well last year versus things we could change this year? I like to have her input. So, that's the first thing I do when we're setting goals, like what would you like to learn this year? After I have that written down and I kind of know what she's interested in because I tend to like to do that for our geography, our history, our science, our unit study, if you will, which I can already tell you we'll be starting this year off with ancient Egypt. Um, in the Cane Chronicles, I like to pull out my ultimate guide to learning yearbyear. If you have the skills checklist for learning, um, that was what this kind of was first and then it evolved. greatly into this. This is the new updated like amazing version because it has the skills checklist in it, but it also has even more. So, for each grade level, it has the skills and concepts that they should be mastering for language arts and math. There is also an amazing book list and an amazing game list. Like, present me thinks past me each and every year when I get to look at this cuz I'm like, man, I'm so glad I have this resource. I wish id had it from day one. So, I will reference it. I will actually look at the skills checklist for three different grades. So I will be looking in this case at 7th grade, 8th grade, and 9th grade. I'm going to look at seventh grade to make sure that we have mastered all of those concepts. I'm going to make a note. Are there any that we haven't mastered? Because if so, those are the concepts that I'm going to start with first. Then I look at eighth grade and I'm like, okay, what skills and concepts are in eighth grade that we need to master that we don't have mastered yet? Um, and then I'm going to look forward at ninth grade because sometimes the skills will roll over and they'll be very, very similar. And if that's the case, I want to make myself a note that we need to expose it but not master it. And that kind of starts as my goals for the year. That will be my goals for math and language arts. For example, read a wide range of age appropriate fiction and non-fiction. Well, then one of my goals is going to be to make sure we read a large range of non-fiction and fiction that's age appropriate. So, I'm going to start sourcing things that I can use that with. So, eighth grade appropriate fiction and non-fiction for our home school. I'm going to set that as a goal. And I do that so simply just by using the checklist. It's the thing I've referred to over and over and over in our home school for probably at least the past 5 years. The second thing that I do is choose my one thing for the year. One thing has been something that we've done probably since Emily was in first grade, maybe even earlier than that, I'm not sure. And it's kind of our focus for the year. So, we choose one thing that we really want to find a way to get into our home school. maybe something we aren't doing very very well. In the past, we've done readalouds, game schooling, nature study, art, field trips. These are all things that like once you really focus on them for an entire year, they kind of become second nature. So once we spent a whole year with like readalouds as our one thing, the thing we were going to focus on, the habit we wanted to build, by the next year it was there. We were just automatically doing it. Same thing with games. We became game schoolers naturally. Um, same things with nature study. While we may not necessarily use a curriculum for nature study, after we spent a year focusing on it, it comes so much more naturally. Like even when we're just going for a normal walk, we're stopping to talk about the plants or the animals or the tracks that we see. Um because we spent a year really focused on nature study. Same thing with art. Now as a family, we just have art nights as like a family fun night. That's something we never would have done before spending a year focusing on art. And they just become these habits that just become like built in. like they're pillars that now are part of our home school on a regular basis. So we talk about our one thing. Normally we sit down as a family and we pick it together. This year I kind of overruled everybody and I was just like this is our one thing. I picked it. Um our one thing is going to be mindset. Uh that is what we're going to be working on. It's going to be the thing we're focusing on this year. I will share more about that in a future video once I have all the resources for it. But I feel like there's not a whole whole lot of academic things that I need Emily to like really really focus on before we go into high school. I mean, there's obviously things we're going to do, but there's not like this is what I need you to do. She's not behind or anything. And because of that, I feel like before we get to high school, instead of focusing on the academics, the things I really want to be working on is the mindset. Like I want her to be in the right mindset. I want her to be powerful. I want her to be able to, you know, use her emotions. like I want her to be able to do all that. So, that is going to be our one thing this year. Um, again, in the past, it's been numerous different things. It could be anything. It could be something as simple as consistency or maybe your routine, like I would really like to get my routine down this year. But whatever it is, that's the thing you focus on for the year. And I promise once you've done that for an entire year, it will be second nature the next year and you can add something else. So, that is always step two for us. Step three is when I take inventory. So, I already have my goals. I already have my one thing. And because of that, I know what I want to teach in the new home school year, right? Like, I know what Emily's interest in her. I know what we want for math. I know what we want for language arts. Her interests are probably going to be our unit studies, which is typically everything else for us. And I know my one thing is. So, now that I know that, I need to inventory my shelves. What do I have on the bookshelves? What do I have on the game shelves? What resources do I have in the office that are maybe curriculum that I haven't looked at that maybe would work for this school year? and I kind of like just get a really good inventory. What do I have that will work for the goals and the concepts that I want to do this home school year? After I have done that, I do the next step, which is step four, and that's make a shopping list. Once I know what I have on hand, I know what I need to teach or address, and I know that I don't have things for that. So, for example, I know our one thing is mindset, and I know I'm going to be buying books for that. Um, I know there's going to be some books that I'm going to want to add for that non-fiction and fiction age appropriate. So, like I kind of have an idea like, okay, I have five books that'll work. I want to read one book a month, so I'm going to add another five books in or whatever it is. And I'll start making my shopping list. I like making my shopping list typically a little earlier than this because I normally like to have it for Prime Day, which I didn't have it. And so, therefore, I didn't shop Prime Day at all. Literally bought nothing. Um, but I like to try to use back to school sales and buy two get one free and prime days and all of that to my benefit. So, if and when possible, I have my shopping list prior to that. Just not going to happen this year. And I'm okay with it. I will pay a little bit higher price if I have to if things don't go on sale sometimes in the next month. Step five is the one I dread the most and it's to purge because now I have all of these resources that I'm going to be using for the upcoming home school year. And I have more stuff that we're adding the things that I've shoed for, new curriculum, new books, new games, new hands-on activities, whatever it is. Um, and we have a limited amount of space. And the space that we have is always, always, always at maximum capacity. So that means if I have stuff coming in, I have to have stuff going out. So now it's time to purge the shelves. What do we not use anymore? What has Emily outgrown? What didn't work for us? You know, what can I honestly donate, sell, get rid of? Whatever it is, I typically donate. We have a lot of homeschoolers in our area. My sister is even homeschooling now and she has two kids that are younger than Emily. So, right now we're like passing most of the things on so that she can use them. But either way, it's time to purge the shelves. Like I have to have room to put the new stuff. And then the final step, step six, is to assess our routine. So, we'll kind of sit down and talk about what part of our routine worked for us from last year versus what is going to work for us this year because we've now probably changed or added extracurriculars. We do that typically at the end of the summer. We'll talk to Emily when we're talking about her interest and say like, "What do you want to do this year?" Uh, last year it was archery and karate. Who knows what it's going to be this year? But that means we need to figure out when do those things happen? What days are they? What times are they? What is our routine going to look like? Not a schedule because we don't do schedules. We do not do like this this this this. But for example, if we're going to be out of the house on Mondays, okay, maybe this year we're schooling Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and we're going to take Mondays off or maybe we're taking Wednesdays off. Um last year we changed up our morning basket kind of just became our basket time and we actually ended up starting to do that at lunchtime because that's what worked better now that we have a teenager. Uh so that's kind of what I'm talking about. What is our routine going to look like? What days are we probably going to be homeschooling? Um Kevin normally does steam with Emily one day a week. So what day is going to be his day to do steam with her? You know, when am I gonna be doing basket time? What is our routine going to be looking like? How are we going to weave life work? Because Kevin and I both work from home full-time and homeschool into our days. And so we need to talk about that as a family and kind of figure out a rhythm or a flow that is hopefully best case scenario going to help our homeschool year go as smooth as possible. I would absolutely love to know the steps that you take to plan your home school year. Let me know down in the comments. [Music]