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10 Steps to Plan Your Homeschool Year (with a Free Printable Homeschool

Lesson Planner!)
So you have decided that you want to start homeschooling. Now what? Or maybe
you have been homeschooling for a while but are feeling disorganized and frazzled.
Here is my framework for planning lessons- and my year- to make sure that I am
intentional in what I teach my kids in our homeschool. I have also created a free
printable homeschool lesson planner to share with you. This printable PDF has
everything you need to help you feel organized and to teach with intention this
school year!
The Homeschooling with Confidence free printable Homeschool Lesson Planner has
everything you need inside to plan your homeschool year- and your daily lessons-
with confidence.
Get My Free Planner!
Step 1: Find Your “Why”
What are your reasons for choosing homeschooling? Why are you homeschooling
your child? Are there things about their experience in traditional school that you are
looking to avoid? Or are there benefits that you hope to gain? It is important to start
with these reasons, because these are the fuel that will keep you going when the
going gets tough. I wrote a whole post about reasons to homeschool, which you can
reference here. The free printable homeschool lesson planner includes a page to
journal about your reasons for homeschooling that you can save for reference
throughout the school year.
Pin this for reference!
Step 2: What are the Legal Requirements?
When I started, this was one of the scariest parts of homeschooling to me. I knew
that there were truancy laws in my state, and I imagined a scary CPS worker coming
to my door, and demanding custody of my children because they weren’t at school.
Fortunately, this fear was unfounded. I’ve found that the best way to fight fear in this
area is with the truth.
First of all, DO NOT start by calling your local school district. Some local school
districts are awesome and helpful and have great information about homeschooling.
But, others do not and might try to scare you away from homeschooling at all. Your
local school district gets funding for each student that’s enrolled. So your decision to
homeschool your child represents a loss of a pretty significant chunk of change to
your local school. That’s ok; you are doing what is best for your child which is your
job as their parent. But going to your school district for homeschool advice is like
going to Target to ask how to shop at Wal-Mart. You’re asking your competitor for
advice.
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Where should you go for advice?
Instead, a good starting place is the Home School Legal Defense Association
(HSLDA). They have a great interactive map on their website. You can click on your
state and find out lots of great information including:
 The ages for which the legal school requirements kick in (in many states this
does not start until age 6 or 7). I’m not saying that you shouldn’t home school
younger kids. However, you might get a grace period before you need to deal
with the homeschool laws.
 Whether or not you need to notify the local school district- in many states
notification is not required, especially if you don’t enroll your child in the
public schools to begin with.
 What qualifications are required of you as the teacher, if any.
 What subjects are required to be taught.
 Whether and what kind of testing and record-keeping is required.
 Whether immunizations are required.
 The specific homeschool laws for your state and how to comply with them.
Take a few minutes now to research your state’s homeschool laws. If record-keeping
is required, it is much easier to set up a system at the beginning than to try to
recreate the records later.
Step 3: Set Goals for the Year in your Free Printable Homeschool Lesson
Planner
Now that you know what is required by your state, it’s time to think about your own
goals for your child. This is where you get to have fun dreaming about the reasons
why you are keeping your child home in the first place.
For our family, our faith plays a big role in why we are homeschooling. We believe
that our first and most important priority is to teach our kids to know and love God,
and so this plays a role in every homeschool subject we teach. In addition to specific
Bible lessons, we teach other subjects with a Biblical worldview wherever possible. I
also believe strongly in the importance of reading. From a young age we have spent
a lot of time as a family reading together and teaching my kids to read is a huge
priority for me.
Another thing to take into consideration is the strengths and weaknesses of your
child. You should consider both academic subjects and developmental milestones
when choosing your goals. You might include gross or fine motor skills, or social
skills that you will be practicing with your kids, in your goals for them.
I wrote a whole post about how to set goals and decide what you will be teaching
your kids, and what you should consider when making these decisions. You can find
that resource here.

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The free printable homeschool lesson planner includes a goal setting page where
you can record the goals that you have for each of your children for the school year.
It is important to write our goals down. Research shows that we are more likely to
achieve the goals we write down!
Step 4: Think About How Your Homeschool Will Look
You’ve researched the legal requirements for homeschooling in your state. You’ve
chosen what subjects you will focus on, and figured out what your child needs to
know. Now it’s time to figure out how you would like to teach these subjects, and
how your child will best learn them. This is a really important step that is often
skipped, and it will save you lots of frustration on behalf of you and your child (and
money spent on the wrong curriculum) later.
As you read through this list of learning styles, think about your child. Which ones
seem like they fit your child’s personality? Knowing your child’s learning style is
important so that you can plan your homeschool lessons to match the way your
child learns best.
Seven Learning Styles
Visual
This child learns by seeing pictures. They might enjoy imagining what they are
learning or drawing a picture or making an art project.
Musical
This child learns with music and songs. They might like to make up their own songs
or play instruments.
Related Post: Maestro Mastery game review
Verbal
This child learns by speaking, hearing, reading, or writing words. They might have a
large vocabulary, or repeat what you say to help remember it.
Physical
This child learns by doing. They love gross motor and large muscle activities and
they learn better when they are moving.
Logical
This child learns with logic and reasoning. They enjoy making patterns, solving
problems, and following directions step by step.
Social
This child learns best with other people. They love working together with others (or
with you) and learn best that way
Solitary
This child learns best alone. They need time to think about what they have learned
and process it by themselves.
Types of Learners
 Visual Learners learn by seeing and reading.
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  Auditory Learners learn by listening and speaking.
 Kinesthetic Learners learning by touching and doing.
Most people have a dominant style that they prefer, but learn information from all
three. It is helpful to think about how your child learns best, and to make sure to
teach using that style. But, the best lessons will incorporate aspects of all three styles
whenever possible. For example, let’s think about a lesson teaching the names of the
alphabet letters. A visual lesson might involve looking at a list of the letters of the
alphabet, and pointing to different letters while saying their names. An auditory
lesson might include singing the ABC song together. And a kinesthetic lesson might
be tracing the letters with a finger.
Lessons that Combine Learning Styles:
My favorite alphabet letter lesson is actually to play with magnetic letters at the
fridge with my kids. It works so well because it uses all 3 types of learning as we are
putting the alphabet magnets on the fridge:
 Visual: We are looking at the letter magnets to see the shape of the letter. Our
letter magnets are also brightly colored.
 Auditory: We are saying the names of the letters together as we put each one
on the fridge. At first, I narrate the lesson: “That’s A. That’s H, etc.” As we
progress the child takes over that job and tells me what the letters are. I follow
the Montessori 3-period lesson structure, which you can read about here.
 Kinesthetic: Our magnets are the shape of the letter, so my child is feeling the
shape of the letter in his hand as he puts it on the fridge.
To make a lesson that includes all the aspects, the easiest way is to start with the
kinesthetic. How can you make this lesson hands-on? Can you include a game?
Some manipulatives? An experiment? Then, try to add visual and auditory pieces as
you present the lesson.
Homeschool Teaching Styles
Traditional
At its most basic, traditional homeschoolers are re-creating the experience of a
traditional public school at home. These families might use textbooks and
workbooks as their curriculum, and they might give tests to show mastery of the
ideas. They might set up a schoolroom in their house with desks and a whiteboard.
This is often a very comfortable starting place for parents who come from a public
school background because they are doing what they know. And the structure of a
traditional school setting can be really helpful for some kids and families.
Classical
This type of homeschooling is based on the trivium, which was developed in the
Middle Ages by Martianus Capella. Classical homeschool families focus on teaching
kids how to think by using 3 main stages of development as a basis for their
curriculum. In the Grammar stage, kids focus on memorizing and repeating facts in
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a wide variety of subjects. In the Dialectic stage, kids begin to ask questions and
compare and contrast as they think logically about what they know. Finally comes
the Rhetoric stage, where kids focus on communicating what they know through
writing and speaking.
Charlotte Mason
This method of homeschooling was created by Charlotte Mason, who was a British
author and teacher in the late 1800s. These families focus on exposing kids to lots of
high quality “living books” as textbooks and spending lots of time outside in nature.
Instead of taking tests, kids “narrate” or tell or write what they have learned when
the lesson is done.
Unit Studies
In the unit study method, homeschool families focus all their curriculum and lessons
around a specific topic that they study in great depth. A family doing a unit study
about the Egyptians might read stories about mummies for a language lesson,
calculate the volume of a pyramid for math, read about the history of ancient Egypt,
and even make a mummy for a science lesson. Unit studies tend to focus on hands-
on learning and may be a great fit for families that are teaching kids of multiple ages
together.
Montessori
This philosophy was developed by Maria Montessori who was a doctor and educator
in Italy in the early 1900s. Montessori believed in creating a prepared environment
where specific educational materials would be displayed and available for kids to
choose to use. These families give kids lots of choices in how they are learning
within the prepared environment.
Waldorf
This method was created in the early 1900s by Rudolf Steiner. Kids learn through
activities, rather than textbooks. They study art and music, nature and gardening.
Lessons focus on morality and educating the whole person.
Unschooling
This is a type of homeschooling that is lead by the student and their interests, rather
than a curriculum. Unschooling families will use their child’s curiosity as a guide, and
allow the child to focus on learning about what they are most interested in.
Eclectic
Eclectic homeschool families will choose elements of several different methods to
create their own approach that best fits their child and their family. These families
see value in different methods and use the pieces of each that best fit them.
Take a few minutes to re-read the list of learning styles with each of your children in
mind. Notice which styles seem to describe them best. Look through the
homeschool teaching styles as well to see which ones resonate with you. Then take a
few minutes to brainstorm how you might use this to help you teach. The free
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printable homeschool lesson planner can be used with any of these homeschool
styles!
Get the Free Homeschooling with Confidence Planner!
The Homeschooling with Confidence free printable Homeschool Lesson Planner has
everything you need inside to plan your homeschool year- and your daily lessons-
with confidence.
Get My Free Planner!
Step 5: Choose Your Curriculum
Before you get started with choosing a curriculum, there are a few general things to
consider as you look at a new curriculum:
1. Does this curriculum match your child’s learning style?
If your child is a hands-on learner, a textbook with lots of small print and an
accompanying workbook might not be a good fit for a science curriculum. You
might want to look for a book of science experiments to do instead.
2. Does it match your teaching style?
Do you love to get messy with your child and make projects? Or does the thought of
a huge mess in your kitchen make you cringe? Would you prefer to cuddle with your
child on the couch and read a book? It’s best to be honest with yourself about your
preferences upfront. Choosing a curriculum that aligns with how you prefer to teach
will make homeschooling more fun for you and will make you more likely to do it!
3. How much hands-on involvement from you as a teacher is
required?
Some curriculums are very hands-on and require you to be present to lead the child
through the lesson the whole time they are learning (especially at a younger age),
and others can be done completely independently. You might even be able to find
a video curriculum that can teach a subject or two for you! It’s good to find a
balance here. It is helpful to have a subject or two that’s more independent for your
child so that you have a few minutes of breathing room or a chance to help a sibling.
You will want to be hands-on for some of it too, however; this is why you are
homeschooling!
4. How much planning is required?
There are a lot of great curriculums out there that are “open and go.” When it’s time
to do that subject you will just open the curriculum to the next lesson and follow the
directions. In my first year of formal homeschooling, I used a curriculum that did all
the lesson planning for me. There was a master teacher book that had the day’s
lesson completely organized. It told me what pages we should read in the history
book, what our topic was for the day’s math lesson, and even what art project we
should do. It had a supply list for the week’s lessons and even suggested songs to
sing and stories to read. This curriculum made it easy for me to homeschool. I wasn’t
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spending a lot of time planning lessons; I could literally open the book to the next
page and teach that day’s lessons.
By contrast, I am using a math curriculum now that is totally NOT “open and go.” It
has a textbook, and a workbook, and 2 different supplemental workbooks. I also
have a teacher’s guide that is supposed to show how all these books work together,
but it has additional suggested activities of its own. I am finding that I have to spend
additional time weekly figuring out what we are going to do for each day’s lessons.
If I don’t commit this time I won’t be prepared for our lessons. Try to look for an
“open and go” curriculum if you can!
5. How does it fit with your state’s requirements?
Does your state require that you follow common core? Will your child be required
to take standardized tests that cover certain topics? If so, finding a curriculum that
aligns with the state’s standards will be helpful in alleviating stress at test time.
You can check out my curriculum reviews to find ideas for great homeschool
curriculum options.
Step 6: Choose a Schedule
You will need to decide how many days per week you would like to do homeschool,
and for how many weeks. Many states require a certain number of days or hours of
instruction, so this is a good starting point. Other than that, the schedule is up to
you. You might consider homeschooling less than 5 days per week, so that you have
flexibility to run errands, attend a playgroup, sign up for a class or team, or just take
a day to have fun. You might chose to start your school year earlier or end later, or
homeschool through the summer. This would give you some flexibility to do school
3 or 4 days per week, or to take some extended time off for holidays or vacations.
Homeschoolers love to take their vacations when school is in session- things are less
crowded and vacations are cheaper!
Setting Priorities
Once you have decided how many days per week to homeschool and for how many
weeks, you will need to figure out how often to study each subject. Some subjects
will be a part of your homeschool every day. Subjects like math where the material
builds on itself are important to practice daily so that concepts aren’t forgotten. You
might also have subjects that are important to your family that you want to study
every day. Bible is one of those subjects for our family.
You might also look at your child’s skills to see where you would like to prioritize
their practice. When my son was learning to read, we practiced reading every day-
even on weekends when we were not doing formal homeschool. Now we are really
focusing on handwriting because he needs some extra practice in this area. We start
our homeschool day with handwriting each morning to make sure that we get it in.
Alternating and Loop Schedules
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Some subjects are important but not important enough to do every day. If you have
some of these, you could choose days of the week to do them. For example, “We do
science on Monday and Wednesday, and history on Tuesday and Thursday. We do
art on Friday.”
Another alternative to this is a loop schedule. In a loop schedule, you choose one or
more subjects and alternate them. On each homeschool day, you do the next
subject in the loop. So, if your loop includes science, history, and art, you do science
on the first day, history on the next, then art, and then back to science again. The
advantage of the loop schedule is that one-time appointments don’t mess up your
schedule. If you only do art on Fridays, but you have appointments 2 Fridays in a
row, it could be 3 weeks before you do art again. With a loop schedule, you would
just push art to Monday and you wouldn’t get behind.
Step 7: Divide Up Your Curriculum
Your next step in scheduling will be to figure out roughly how to divide the content
or lessons that you have up throughout the year. Some curriculum comes already
divided into lessons, or even into weeks, and this makes it really easy. Count up the
number of lessons and the number of weeks in your homeschool year, and divide
them up to figure out how many lessons per week you will need to do in order to
finish the curriculum in the year.
Other curricula might not be divided this way. You might figure out roughly how
many pages in the book you need to read per month or week. Then you can
estimate some mile markers- “I want to be starting chapter 3 in this book by
October, and done with chapter 6 by Christmas,” etc. Or you might choose a topic
to study in depth each month. It is helpful to have a general plan like this for each
subject that you will be studying this year.
Be flexible
Once you have a general outline of the year, this is where I recommend that you
stop with long-term planning. If you create a detailed lesson plan for each lesson
for the whole year (other than taking a really long time) you will be committed to
following it. What happens a month from now when your child takes a sudden
interest in frogs and you decide that you want to take a break from your science
curriculum to learn about frogs and grow tadpoles instead? Or when your child
starts really struggling with their spelling words and you discover that you need to
slow down to work at a pace they can handle?
You can re-visit your sketch for the year every month or two to make sure that you
are still on track, or that you are comfortable with modifying your plan to
accommodate the new direction your lessons have taken.
Step 8: Plan Your Month with the Free Printable Homeschool Lesson Planner

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It is really helpful to look ahead at the lessons you have planned for the month. I
mostly do this for gathering supplies. About once a month I check the curricula we
are using for each of our subjects to make sure there are no books or homeschool
supplies we will need for the upcoming month’s lessons that we don’t already have.
This gives me time to add supplies to my next shopping list or Amazon Prime order.
I also like to look for library books to complement the topics we will be studying.
Planning ahead gives me time to organize a trip to the library.
The free printable homeschool lesson planner includes a blank calendar that can be
used for monthly planning. This calendar will also be helpful as you plan which days
will be school days in each month. You can record the dates of holidays and family
activities and plan your homeschool lessons around those dates.
Step 9: Plan Your Week
Once a week, it is helpful to spend time planning lessons for the week ahead. I
usually take a few minutes on the weekend to do my planning for the upcoming
week. I get out my curriculum resources for each subject we are studying, and I
choose which lessons or activities I hope to get done each week.
The free printable homeschool lesson planner includes pages that you can print to
fill in your plans for each day of the week. It is helpful to choose which subjects you
will be studying on each day, and to have a general plan of what you would like your
kids to do or learn in each subject. Curricula that is divided by lesson makes this
easy; you can just mark which lessons your child will complete each day. If your
curriculum is not divided this way, make sure to choose which activities, practice
problems, reading sections, and supplementary materials you will be completing
each day.
It is important to remember that it’s ok not to follow the plans exactly. Sometimes
one of my kids gets really interested in one of the topics we are studying, and we
take a detour to spend some extra time learning about that topic in more depth. Or,
something that I had planned is much more confusing than I expected and we need
to slow down to make sure we get enough time to practice the concept. The goal of
lesson planning is not to create a bunch of rigid rules that have to be followed. The
goal is to think intentionally about what we want our kids to be learning and make a
target to strive towards. Feel free to change your plans in the free printable
homeschool lesson planner throughout the week as needed.
Step 10: Plan Your Day with the Free Printable Homeschool Lesson Planner
I usually take some time each evening to look over my planner and plan what I’ll be
doing the next day. The free printable homeschool lesson planner includes a page to
do this. On this page you can plan your homeschool lessons as well as your to-dos
and even your menu for the day. It helps me to be able to see everything I need to
do in one place, and that’s why I designed the free printable homeschool lesson
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planner to include places to record the other things you are doing in your day,
besides homeschooling. I also take some time in the evenings to reflect on the day’s
homeschool lessons and to adapt my plan for the next day based on how the
previous day went.
Download your Free Printable Homeschool Lesson Planner Today!
The Homeschooling with Confidence free printable Homeschool Lesson Planner has
everything you need inside to plan your homeschool year- and your daily lessons-
with confidence. This planner includes daily, weekly, and monthly planning sheets
that can be printed and customized to fit your family and your homeschool, no
matter what kind of homeschool method you choose. Journaling sheets for
recording your reasons for homeschooling and your goals for the year will help you
stay motivated and intentional as you plan your lessons. This planner also includes
an attendance record sheet so you can record the days that your child attends
school for legal reasons. Get yours for free and start planning your homeschool year
with confidence today!
Get the Free Homeschooling with Confidence Planner!

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