I’m so excited to be kicking off a two part series called, “Homeschool Planning” and it will have two parts!! Part one, will be all about how I prepare for my upcoming homeschool year, so a more broad type of planning and preparation. Part two, will include a much more detailed look at how I plan out my curriculum for a new school year and break things out for each school week.
Let’s jump right in!!
I’m a homeschooling Mom to five girls. I have a 4th grader, 3rd grader, 1st grader, and twin 3 year olds!! I started teaching my oldest in preschool, which means I’ve been homeschooling for 6 years now. The first few years were the hardest, because I was never homeschooled and had a big learning curve. However, God was faithful to patiently teach me what I needed for each specific year.
Today, I’m going to share the broad ways I begin to prepare for an upcoming school year. I will be sharing about how I pray for our upcoming school year to begin ready to order new curriculum. My favorite!! These aren’t hard and fast rules about what you need to do, but simply my process. I hope you will find this helpful as you begin to prepare for your own upcoming school year.
5 Ways to Prepare for Your Upcoming Homeschool Year
1. Pray for wisdom. I use the Val Marie Paper Prayer Journal to keep track of my monthly prayer requests. I have one section labeled, “Homeschool” so I can have a place to write down prayer requests for a particular month. My main prayer request is wisdom about our curriculum. Seriously, this is so important!! I also pray to have a zeal and excitement for homeschooling. As I pray, I begin to catch a vision for upcoming homeschool. Our lives are far from perfect, but God has been faithful to answer my prayers!!
2. Write down ideas. I use the notes app on my phone to jot down ideas about our upcoming school year. Currently, I have a note called, “2022-2023 Homeschool”, and I created in back in July 2021 after we began our current school year. This note is very helpful to me, because I can write down ideas for next year without having to commit to anything. Additionally, it helps me remember all my ideas and see what things will work for our upcoming school year.
3. Choose a curriculum. Typically, around January or February, in a very broad sense, I begin to decide on our main curriculum for the upcoming school year. Both, in my mind and in my notes app. Don’t forget, nothing is set in stone and God might lead you to make some changes down the road. However, making these overall curriculum choices early on helps me to have time to go through my own books to use what I have, order new curriculum and books, and buy other supplies before we start our next school year.
4. Use books you already have. It’s important to go through what I already have and this is a principle I live by in most areas of my life!! Deciding on curriculum early on gives me a chance to go through what I already have to set books and other supplies aside for our upcoming school year. I have a big plastic box full of all my incredible finds sitting in our school room!! Additionally, this process will help you save money!!
5. Order new curriculum. Once I have gone through my own bookshelves, I make a list of the main curriculum and books we will need to order. I also make lists for each of my girls of the individual curriculum each of them will need for the coming year. Again, planning early lets me have time to wait until books or curriculum go on sale to buy them. It also gives me time to order new curriculum, check it out and return it if I don’t like it. Seriously, I love curriculum, so as the boxes of curriculum begin to arrive it feels like Christmas morning to me!!
I hope this was helpful!! Please let me know if you have any questions. In the near future, I will write the next blog post in this series.
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