Episode 44: Planning Our Year 2021
It can be overwhelming to plan your homeschool year. We talk about some research in successful planning, walk you through a free helpful planning tool we developed, and so much more. Check out our helpful and free download for reflecting back and planning forward activity sheet for homeschool parents!
Watch
Listen
Show Notes
*some of our recommendations may include affiliate links, which means when you order them from Amazon, we will receive a small commission.
Planning Ahead
Studies show that planning ahead is uber helpful in setting your homeschool year up for success, “It’s better to measure 10 times and cut once.” Part of planning ahead is reflecting on previous years. For more about reflecting back, check out episode 43. Don’t forget to check in with your homeschool mission statement! We also reference our Us-schooling article also mentioned in our The Brave Learner book podcast episode 30
We dive into what we are planning for this next school year.
Science: Human Body Unit Study
As part of our unit study on The Human Body by Gather Round Homeschool, we will be reading food-based and recipe books and picture books such as Usborne Start to Cook, The Beast Feast, A Fine Dessert, Eat the Cake, and Farm to Fork. In August we will begin our cooking subscription box service called Radish Kids. We are also working on our social emotional intelligence using Big Life Journal’s activity workbook/kit. Also, as my daughter is approaching tween age, I will walk her through the American Girl book, The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Younger Girls. For hands on, I bought this small model of the human body with squishy organs that can be taken apart. This one is especially fun because it’s posable and has eyeballs! I also ordered a Banyan Tree Box for Kids about cell exploration. We also plan to dissect a pig heart and a sheep brain.
Also, the Gather Round Homeschool Space Unit, Botany Unit, and Oceans Unit are planned for the coming year.
History
This set of American history and government books is so helpful! It is a great lead up to learning about California missions!
Math
Math-U-See is a curriculum we both love. Plus, we both plan to ask our daughters to dive into Multiplication Nation this year taught by an inspiring National Teacher of the Year, Alex Kajitani (see this homeschool dad’s expert advice here).
Literature and Language Arts
Updating your book list of classic and important books to read with your child as a read-aloud or as an audio book is a simple way to plan to grow your child’s exposure to great works. A helpful tool is the Read Aloud Family Journal (for 100 books!). Spelling-You-See and cursive will also be continued from last year into the next year.
My Children’s Interests
A great way to plan your school year is around your child’s interests. We utilize a questionnaire available here. The triangle and harmonica were requested by my youngest child. My daughter who loves to write will be taking a course by Classical Academic Press called Writing and Rhetoric. I also bought her a book on how to self publish a children’s book since she’s been asking to self publish for months. The editing process is a natural flow of learning for the writers in our families - which will be explored too.
State Standards
There are some topics that the state requires that I’m happy to dive into - because it means field trips! This year we will field trip to at least one mission and utilize Scott O’Dell’s book, The Cruise of the Arctic Star to provide the informational content for our journey(s).
Language
One of us is going on to year 2 for Latin and the other is starting Spanish!
Enrichment
We love Poetry Tea Time at our house, and so we are going to dive into poetry with this book. My children love counting up their money, saving money, and, of course, spending their money, so we plan to learn more about that with this children’s book (get a used edition) about dividing up your money, this piggy bank, and this Dave Ramsey book. Plus a Star Wars Day (and space study for a couple weeks), and some Harry Potter themed educational days too of course!
Outside the Home
With a homeschool theater arts program, horseback riding, gymnastics, our Coop Group and more, we. have plenty of educational fun planned for the year.
Planners
We love to plan! We talk about that, including how we fail our plan on our blog article.
The Happy Planner - You also need to buy the discs to go with your planner to hold it together if you print your own version.
Plan Your Year is a strong content book and workbook that really walks you through planning your year in a thorough, fulfilling way.
The Coop Homeschool is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. See Disclosure Page for more information.