Just jumping into homeschooling can seem overwhelming at first. What do I cover? How do I schedule things? I hope giving you a run-down of my lesson planning helps give you a place to start with homeschool lesson plans this year.
Educational Philosophy
Before I start planning, I have come to realize just how important it is to know where you are aiming. Having a very clear educational philosophy direction, even just a sense of educational philosophy that fits your family, is vital for planning.
Questions to Ask
If you don’t know where to begin with educational philosophy ask yourself these 3 questions. What is a person? How are people formed? What is the end we are aiming at?
Answering these questions will get to the base of what you believe education is and what education is for.
If you still are unsure, maybe try this free “what kind of homeschooler are you quiz”. That can give you a hint into a philosophy you may lean towards.
Discovering our Educational Philosophy Path
When I first started looking into home education, I met with a seasoned mother from my church who homeschooled. I hosted her for tea and asked all the questions. What was her co-op like? How do I begin teaching reading? What age are these things important? She gave me a curriculum catalog and the recommendation to read the Well Trained Mind for learning more about classical education. This was my small step forward into the world of educational philosophy.
Then I read For The Children’s Sake which introduced me to Charlotte Mason. This for me was like stepping into Narnia from the wardrobe. Things started to click and I felt at home. After that I was introduced to The Common Place YouTube and podcast which inspired me towards a harmonious Classical Charlotte Mason homeschool. This is the educational philosophy path I am studying now.
Permission to discover & change
All that to say, you are not married to an educational philosophy from the start and we are constantly learning and growing as people. If you know roughly what direction you want to take your children’s education, that can give you a starting point for further planning.
Year Reflection
Next, I like to take time to reflect on the last year. Even if this is your first year of planning any kind of education for your children, take some time to reflect on your home life. Consider your family, your child, and yourself. These reflections will give you good insight on planning out your homeschool year.
More questions to ask
What worked well in the last year?
Are there habits in your home that served you really well this last year? Home rhythms and routines? Ways of learning and interacting with one another?
What needs adjusting?
Anything that didn’t work well this last year? What would you like to see change?
Anything I want to start implementing that is new?
All of these questions can give insight into the best resources to choose, habits to work on and planning a routine that is going to nourish your family life and homeschool. Are there personal habits that mom needs to work on to make our days flow smoother? These are great questions to ask and reflect on as your build out the vision for your homeschool lesson plans.
Year-at-a-Glance
After I look back at my year reflection notes, I print out a year-at-a-glance for the school year ahead.
What weeks are we planning to do school? When does that vacation fall on the calendar? What do we want to do for Christmas and summer?
I then highlight the weeks I plan on formal schooling.
States vary on the amount of days, time and recording of school work that is required for students. Check out the HSLDA website for your state specific requirements. This can have affect on how many days you plan to school.
Trello Board
Then, I reference my Trello board.
Trello is a free online program for planning. I like to keep links, subjects, resources, and my broad term plan on Trello. Keeping all of these ideas, links and resources in one place helps me to avoid shiny object syndrome. When another mom tells me about a resource or I see something I may be interested in during the middle of the school year, instead of buying it immediately, I put the link in my Trello board and revisit when I am ready to plan and look at new resources.
Print your booklist
After referencing my Trello board, I print a list of the books and resources I would like to use for our lesson plans. I compile a list of everything I want in our lesson rotation for the school year. Math curriculum, guides to print, books to read- I make sure I have a thorough list and print it off as a reference.
This year I am pulling many of our resources from the Ambleside Online Booklist. I added many of those books to my list of resources for our lessons.
Create a Term overview/guide
After printing off a list of my books, guides and resources to have on hand for lessons, I create a term overview. Ambleside Online gives a free printout of this if you want to follow their lesson plans to the letter. I like to customize my own term overview but using a very similar format.
I make columns for each of our 12 weeks in a term, categorize by subject, and fill out the lessons spread out over the term.
Schedule cards/building a timetable
After I have a rough layout of my term overview, I plan out our days.
I like using A Delectable Education Form 1 scheduling cards for planning our school time block. They also have scheduling cards for other grades and subjects.
These cards are done very well and have been a useful tool in our homeschool.
One of the things I love about these is the indication of how involved the mother will be with the lesson and how independent the child can be. This is helpful when planning and tending to multiple students and children. I use the scheduling blocks to plan out our week then move that plan to my timetable.
I go into detail with this in my Homeschool Planning Youtube video here:
Mother’s thinking love when building your schedule.
Charlotte Mason talks about the mother using a ‘thinking love’ when planning and interacting with children. The way I think about this is knowing the child. As a mother, you know better than anyone else the areas of strength and weakness of your child. You know the habits that need to be worked on. The mother is most aware of the tendencies.
Simply Charlotte Mason website has a wonderful free eBook for a deeper look into this topic HERE.
Mother’s Diary
To help with a mother’s thinking love in our home I like to keep a mother’s diary.
In this traveler’s journal I keep a section for each child and take a time for reflection every few months.
This journal is where I record growth and what we need to pray about/work on for each specific child. It is just for mom. No one else needs to know what goes on in this journal (except the Lord and my husband).
A few ways to break down areas of focus for each child could be physical, moral, educational, spiritual. I’ve heard some mothers break it down into atmosphere, discipline (habits), life (living ideas). The overarching idea is to look thoughtfully at the life of each child as an individual and take these things into account when planning out the feast of ideas, habits to work on and elements of home atmosphere for their education in the year ahead.
Know your child
For young children, Charlotte Mason included play time and movement within the school timetable. I have found that having a set time to get wiggles out, go outside and move our bodies is an important part in being able to attend at the table for my children.
Training
Having a mother’s thinking love is helpful in thoughtfully training children in the way they should go. If I notice a child dawdles over tasks, we can work on more focused work. A child who rushes a task may need to work on best effort and completing a task fully and well.
I incorporate habits into our homeschool lesson plans that I want us to work on as a family. I also include the individual habits for each child that will serve them for life.
After all, a full delightful education that is focused on a life of virtue is more the aim for our homeschool days. We can lose this focus when thinking education is only utilitarian.
Priority
I encourage you to take the time to reflect and develop this kind of thought towards your home and homeschool. Figure out what you want to prioritize for more smooth and delightful days and put these things into your timetable. It is easier to stick to something when we have a plan, a visual reminder and the environment to support in your endeavors.
Weekly flow, time blocks and loop schedule
Once I know my priorities and aim for the year ahead, I put the readings, resources and plan into my week time blocks and loops.
Time blocks and loops help me to stick to more of a flow versus a rigid schedule in our day. I have a set start time of 9am and we flow from there, completing our morning tasks after if they were not completed beforehand.
Loops
A few of the subjects I loop are history, geography, and natural history.
The subjects that we have scheduled to cover once a week, I will stick into a loop. That way if we miss a day of school, we will pick up with the next subject instead of missing it all together.
Example: When we sit at the table and do one of our loop lessons everyday after math, we will cover one of those loop subjects. Monday we may do a history lesson but if we miss Monday next week, we will still do history at some point because it is in a loop format instead of history every Monday.
Afternoon invitations
Every day we have a nap/quiet time from 1-3pm but after this time, I like to set out an afternoon invitation for my children. This may include a snack along with an activity to facilitate independent play/work for the afternoon.
I have found with my young children that the more skills, capabilities and tools they have to work on these things, the less misbehavior I deal with. Children need meaningful work but do not just fall into this work. We must teach them.
This invitation is exactly that, an invitation for them to take and run with for the afternoon.
If you are in the beginning stages of teaching children what is a worthy use of their time and building the skills to work out these things, you will probably need to do some teaching during afternoon invitations. Over time though, you will be able to lay out some supplies and tools on the table, letting the children alone to work out what they want on their own.
Afternoon occupations (meaningful work and skills)
Afternoon occupations are an extension of the invitation and teaching children what is worthy of their time and attention. I have a list of options for these afternoon occupations on my term guide I create.
These activities help with building skills and ordering children’s affections towards what is good. Tending a garden and cardboard modelling is a much more worthy use of their time than sitting in front of a screen or getting into mischief.
We want to equip our children to love what is going to love them back in life. Just as a diet of junk food will not set them up to love nutritious foods, we need to consider what a diet of screen time is actually doing to our children for life. What if they engaged with beautiful skills and grew in capabilities instead?
I know it can be difficult to address at first but I really think less screens and more beautiful occupations needs consideration. We want to help our children love what is worthy of their time.
Here is a free download of over 200 Ideas for Productive Afternoons from Simply Charlotte Mason website.
List of supplies
Once I have this plan to guide our year, I make our list of supplies to support our endeavors. School supplies, sports equipment, notebooks, etc. I compile everything to one place.
Budget and checklist for resources and supplies
Next, I research the books, supplies, and compare prices with our budget. It is easy to go over budget with homeschooling so having a set budget beforehand helps me to thrift where I can, cut things if I need to or save things to purchase later if something is over budget.
Order and Pre-read
After price comparing and budgeting, I order all the things! I make sure to note what I already own for our year, mark what I ordered, then mark again after receiving. This helps me stay organized and not lose track of what I purchased and when.
Organize your materials
After receiving materials I put the books into stacks of what I need to prepare and pre-read. I then move them onto our ‘ready to go’ shelf once I have prepared the lessons. This helps me to stay organized.
Baskets
One of the things that helps me to stay organized is setting up our environment for ease and efficiency. Sectioning out our books and activities is helpful. I like to have everything we need in one place. I have a morning time basket, bins for each child’s school materials, a basket for each child’s quiet time activities and a seasonal reading basket.
Having baskets also helps my children to keep the materials organized, knowing where they go. Keeping things simple enough for them to get things out and put them away on their own.
Keep a logbook
Once our lessons have begun for the year, I keep a logbook of what we have done in a day along with additional notes about how it is going.
Keeping a logbook helps me to remember how things went in a lesson, if we need to make adjustments and if I need to add anything to my mother’s diary. Keeping a logbook is helpful in creating thoughtful homeschool lesson plans.
Adjust as needed
As the year goes on and I take time to reflect, I make adjustments as needed. Nothing is rigid in our days. Each child is going to have different needs throughout the year and we are going to need to keep things flexible, remembering that the schedule and timetable are here as a tool, not a form for us to squeeze ourselves into.
I hope this can be a helpful guide to those trying to fit in a wide feast for their child but don’t know where to start. Take one step at a time, reflect on your home and just do the next right thing.
Wishing you the best homeschool this year!
Until next year!
Amanda
