Scheduling Your Homeschool Year
To set up your calendar, you will want an empty planner with all of the months of the school year. Or, you will want a blank calendar for each month of the school year. Feel free to print the blank, undated calendar that is attached below, or find another one on the internet.
Write the following on your calendar:
Birthdays
Holidays
Vacations
Other events you know you will need to skip school for
Now, decide when you will schedule your twenty-eight weeks of school. Try to choose weeks when you have at least four days to homeschool. Make sure to allow for ample holiday break time, but not so much that your children become bored and start asking for school like mine do!
If you would like an example of how our STAR Homeschool Community calendar is scheduled for STAR, Lynchburg, you can see that here. If you are in a community, your weeks may be pre-planned by the director. If you are not in a community, you will need to determine your own schedule.
Write on your calendar Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and so on, and also make sure to write in when your breaks are.
If it does not suit your personality to write out a calendar, you may skip this part! This curriculum is designed to work with you, and to be tailored to fit your family. If everything in you wants to rebel against a calendar, by all means, ditch the calendar!
There are SO many great planners to choose from, OR, you can make your own. In this lesson, I will share some planners that I have used and/or seen, and I will also share some blank planner pages that you can print to make your own planner.
Planner Pages
Blank Five Day Assignment Chart
This chart has a column on the left for the resource or book title, and then a column for each day of the week, where you can fill in the assignment. The subjects include: Bible & Memory Work, Apologetics, Hymns, Read Aloud Books, History, Geography, Science & Nature, Enrichment & Character, Math, and Language Arts. There is also a blank line to fill in a subject of your choice. This is a two-page spread. Feel free to print it back-to-back, or so that it will be side-by-side, whichever you prefer! You will want to print 28 copies of this for the whole year.
Here is a sample of the Blank Five Day Assignment Chart:
Blank Four Day Assignment Chart
This is just like the Blank Five Day Assignment Chart above, but with four days, for families who do school at home four days per week. Maybe you attend a homeschool community or co-op, or you participate in other activities (or clean house, or grocery shop, or bake sourdough bread) one of the week days. This is the chart for you. The weekdays not labeled, but are left blank on this chart so that you can fill it in with whichever days you do school.
Here is a sample of the Blank Four Day Assignment Chart:
Blank Grid Schedule
This schedule can be used any way you like! My suggestion is to print this as a two-page spread and write your subjects and resources (books) on the left, and then label the top columns: Subjects, and then the days of the week (Day 1, 2, 3, 4 OR Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, or whichever days you will be home). Then, write each assignment in the row of the correct subject and in the column for the day.
Here is a sample of the Blank Grid Schedule:
Planners to Purchase
Well Planned Day Homeschool Planner
This is a tried and true homeschool planner that SO many moms have been using for years and love! Several of my friends use it and highly recommend it. It contains pages similar to the Blank Grid Schedule above, with many additional pages to help you sort out what your school year should look like.
Plum Paper Homeschool Teacher Planner
I love the versatility of the Plum Paper planner, and it's what I am currently using. The pages are so smooth, so if you are a per person, you will love it! You can customize your own planner and even get custom stickers to add to your calendar (I bought yellow stickers with STAR on them to place on the Wednesdays we have STAR). You can purchase these planners in a few different sizes and choose between a spiral bound planner, a disc bound planner (think: Happy Planner), or an unpunched planner. I am currently using a couple of different disc bound planners for different purposes, and I like that I can remove old months and add in extra blank sheets of paper. If you enjoy Happy Planners, I think you'll like this one! (Also--if you buy an 8.5x11 Plum Paper planner and some discs, you could also get a punch and punch your STAR Homeschool reading lists and put them in the planner....!).
Not Consumed: Organized Homeschool Planner
This is a really nice book for planning out your homeschool vision and praying over your year. Not Consumed also sells some excellent Bible study tools for the whole family.
When you have chosen your planner and your books, it is time to fill it all in!
Decide which days you will study each subject
Some subjects should be studied daily:
Bible
Apologetics
Hymns
Read Aloud
Math
Language Arts/Narration
Other subjects can be studied once, twice or three times per week. Choose which days you will study each subject and write the page numbers for each week on your schedule. If you plan to study a subject more than one day per week, divide the assigned weekly reading over those days.
This is a great article on creating a homeschool schedule.
If you are not a "planner person"
Perhaps keeping a planner, or a weekly schedule, feels overwhelming to you! Go with your personality. A better method for you might be to choose which books you plan to read this year, get a general idea of how much you will need to read per week to get through each book in a year, and place a bookmark in each book with this information noted on it. Set these books in a basket next to your most comfortable chair, or in a basket that you will bring outdoors. Read as much as you can each day (or every-other-day, or whatever you decide), nothing the general pace that you will need to keep to get through the book. Some days, you may read more, and some days, you may read less. It is really okay! Please set up your schooling and your schedule in a way that suits your personality best. Do not force yourself into a box of a homeschool mom who keeps a detailed schedule--when you know you are not that person. Don't get down on yourself--God knew everything about you when He created you, and He knew that you were going to be the very best mom and homeschool teacher for your children. He is good, and faithful, and He is using your gifts and talents in unique ways to shape your children into who He wants them to be. Take courage, mama, and be who you are.