How To Plan Your Homeschool Year
I’ve been talking in-depth on Instagram about how I plan my homeschool year. No hacks, no shortcuts, just real planning for a smooth homeschool year. Planning your homeschool year does take a lot of thought, care, prayer, and confidence too! So in this post, I’ll share the things we covered on Instagram, so you have a nice, neat page to keep coming back to if needed.
How to Plan Your Homeschool Year
Tools for Planning your homeschool year
Before we even start the actual planning, let’s talk tools. You don’t need anything fancy—just tools that actually work for you. I love a clean stack of fresh planner pages, a good pen, some good highlighters, and a quiet hour alone with coffee in hand. I also keep past years’ planners nearby so I can flip through and remember what worked, what didn’t, and how we paced things. Whether you use a printed planner, digital spreadsheets, or a mix of both, the goal is to have one central place where everything can live. The simpler the system, the more likely you’ll stick with it all year long.
Start with Clearing the Clutter
You cannot plan well when your mind—and your homeschool space—is cluttered. Before I sit down to do any big-picture planning, I take a day or two to declutter. I clear off our homeschool shelves, pull out books we’re done with or never used, toss broken pencils, and recycle old paper piles. It’s amazing how mentally freeing it is to just see a tidy space. And this goes for mental clutter too—pray through what the year ahead holds, ask God for direction, and lay down the pressure to do it all. Planning from a place of peace will go so much further than planning out of overwhelm.
Learning Well LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate links from Amazon or other programs are used on this website. For more info, please refer to our disclosure statement.
Print Your Homeschool Planner Pages and Fill in Your Year-at-a-Glance Page
Once your space is clear, it’s time to print out your planner pages. I always start with my Year-at-a-Glance page. This is where I sketch out a rough idea of our school year—start and end dates, breaks we want to take, family travel, holidays, and any non-negotiable commitments. Seeing the year spread out in front of me helps me pace things and not over plan. You don’t have to get it perfect—just give yourself a bird’s-eye view of what the year might look like.
You’ll Need a Course of Study for each Kid
This step helps me zoom in a bit more. I sit down with one child at a time and make a course of study for the year. This is just a simple list of subjects they’ll be working through—math, reading, history, science, handwriting, etc. I jot down what curriculum or books we’ll use and what my goals are for each subject. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it’s such a helpful reference point during the year when I need to remember what we set out to do.
Order Curriculum!
Once your plans are all made, it’s time to order curriculum. I try to do this as early as I can so we’re not waiting on boxes to arrive the week we want to start school. I always check what I already have on our shelves before ordering anything new. You might be surprised what you already own! Then I make my orders, print what needs printing, and get everything ready to go. See what we’ve used in the past below. I love that first day when the boxes show up and the kids want to peek inside and see what we’ll be learning that year.
Curious what we’ve used in the past? Here are some of our favorites and yearly curriculum picks:
- Our Favorite Curriculum Picks (Updated List)
- New Homeschool Curriculum Picks for Grades 12, 10, and 5th
- Our 11th & 6th Grade Curriculum Picks
- All-Time Favorite Homeschool Curriculum
- What We’re Using This Year: Curriculum Picks for Grades 11th, 9th, and 4th
- Complete Curriculum for Grades 10, 8th, and 3rd
- Homeschool Curriculum Picks for 9th, 7th, and 2nd Grades
- Curriculum Choices for Grades 12, 8, 6, and 1
Plan out the First Term
You don’t have to write out meticulous plans for the whole year, just start by looking at your terms or quarters–however you like to plan things. For each term, write down some simple goals such as: books to finish, lessons to cover, and field trips you hope to take.
You don’t have to map out the whole year right now—that’s a recipe for burnout. Just focus on the first term or quarter. For each subject, I write out a few simple goals: what books we want to finish, what lessons we hope to cover, and any extras like field trips or projects. I keep it loose, knowing we might shift things around. I like to write in pencil so I don’t feel locked in. These term goals help me stay focused without feeling overwhelmed by the entire year all at once.
Set Up Your Planner
Last step to get ready for the start of the homeschool year: set up your planner! I created my Forever Planner years ago because I didn’t want to remake the wheel each year and I wanted to be able to change my planner if I needed.
Last step! Now that everything’s planned and ordered, it’s time to set up your planner. I created my Forever Planner years ago because I was tired of reinventing the wheel every year. This is where everything lives—weekly lesson plans, attendance, reading logs, notes about progress, and more. I take a little time to label tabs, insert pages I’ll use weekly, and get it ready for that first Monday. There’s something about having it all in one place that makes the start of the year feel calm and grounded. And the best part? You’ll thank yourself later when everything is already set up and ready to go.
Here’s how I set it up: