Homeschool Planning for Year Round Homeschoolers

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Do you homeschool year-round? Does it feel like you never celebrate the end of the homeschool year but just move from one curriculum to the next? For the most part, our family homeschools year-round for a number of reasons. Our homeschooling high schooler gets a significant break from most courses while his younger brother and sister continue their studies through the summer.

Evaluate Materials 

If you homeschool year-round, it becomes very important to take regular breaks and evaluate the materials you are using to teach your children in your homeschool. If something is not working, you should feel free to replace it. Yes, even if you spent a lot of money on it. I know I feel great regret if we have to put curriculum or materials away that were costly, but I have found the homeschooling environment becomes too disrupted when our children are not learning well. (And you can always look to gift that material to another homeschooling family either by reselling it or just passing it along.)

Even if you homeschool year-round, you can still take advantage of traditional homeschool sales. There is no rule that says just because you purchase your new curriculum in July, that you need to start using it in September. In fact, I purchased a history curriculum for our upcoming second-grader from Notgrass History in March and we won't be using it till mid-summer at the earliest.

Planners 

While many traditional school planners run from September to June, there are also a great number of ones that allow you to organize the months, weeks, and days yourself by either printing or purchasing blank pages. This way you can completely customize your planner to meet the needs of your year-round homeschool. With technology today, you could even keep a planner entirely online. Scheduling ones' homeschool year is so easy with all the resources available.

Organizing and Cleaning 

When you are evaluating your curriculum materials, it is a good time to organize or reorganize your homeschool area(s). Clean out all your books, manipulatives, resources, etc. and decide if your previous set up was working for your homeschooling family. I have found this is also a great way to see just exactly what materials one needs to purchase as you might find things you forgot you had for your homeschool.

If you are looking for some new organizational ideas, check out this post: Top 5 Suggestions for Best Organizing Your Homeschool Materials.

At the End of the Day...

Every homeschooling family needs to do what is best for their family. Whether that means you homeschool year-round or use a schedule that follows a more traditional school calendar, we can all follow the same basic planning tips:

• Evaluate Curriculum and Materials
• Look for Sales and Discounts 
• Find the Planner that Works for You
• Organize and Clean your Homeschool Area 

So whether you purchase a full curriculum from a company like Timberdoodle, you are a member of SchoolhouseTeachers.com, or you purchase your materials from many different companies and locations, you can plan with ease as long as you keep your family homeschooling goals in mind. Think about your goals—maybe they need to be reevaluated—and get planning!

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