In numerous areas of life, I live out the adage, failing to plan is planning to fail. I plan menus for our camping trips and prominently display them so folks don’t carelessly snarf the 3lb bag of preshredded cheese that I need for the campfire potatoes. I plan detailed days when grandma comes to stay for the week so we don’t forget the priorities that will make her visit special. We plan out all manner of things in business and our teams appreciate a leader who can unite everyone on an understandable and well communicated road to success. In retrospect, I’m grateful that I carefully planned each homeschool year. Without a plan, I’d certainly have gotten less accomplished with my kids and the inevitable regrets might be more plentiful and painful.

I like to think God is a planner. He created humans in his image (Gen 1:27) so I wonder if that’s why planning seems natural. God has plans to prosper us and not harm us (Jer 29:11). He knows every hair on our head (Luke 12:7) and all the days of our lives (Psa 139:16). It sounds like omnipotence but it also sounds like planning when he knit us on our mothers womb (Psa 139:13) knowing how everything would turn out (Pro 19:21). I’m convinced that being in the will of God with homeschool means seeking his will, creating a plan with God’s guidance in prayer, and holding that plan loosely as we work daily to serve Him in our family.

Planning helps me develop ideas. Sometimes I’ve had a plan in my head, prayed and felt it was good. But, when it came to the day-to-day execution, I realized it wasn’t going to work the way I’d hoped. Homeschool curriculum often comes with a class plan or daily schedule but blending that into the overall plan for my homeschool it doesn’t always fit well. Maybe the schedules call for lessons 5 days a week but we use a 4 day schedule. Planning ahead for a school whole year allows me to subtract or add lessons and activities to fit my kids unique needs. Understanding the bigger picture can help me move lessons around to match other plans for my homeschool. Making a written plan helps me know where we can drop or skip something when we all get the flu for a week and don’t want to be doing lessons while on a beach vacation in July. Also, a lesson in history might match nicely with a lesson from science but, if I don’t plan ahead the opportunity to weave those together will be lost as we bumble and stumble through the days.

Gag Reflex Warning: The following little narrative is not for the imaginative and weak of stomach. I don’t think its terrible but, I like you and wish to keep you as a friend so, the warning is out there. I once taught an animal dissection series (gag) for middle schoolers and needed only the eyeballs from some cows or sheep (gag #2) for a lesson. I started planning early and was able to procure samples during harvest season (as it turns out, harvest is slaughter season in my region – gag #3). If I’d have waited, drug my heels, procrastinated, delayed and not planned ahead, I’d have been mailing away for expensive, formaldehyde-infused (gag #4) samples. Planning and planning some more helps me make the most of each project, lesson and day to create a super cohesive experience and keeps my budget in check.

Having set out a plan, you have an opportunity to find support and buy-in from your spouse and kids. Each year I planned for our daily activities and the budget I’d require for books, supplies and any travel or admission. After seeking God, I needed to seek unity with my husband on the plan. In the early days he might have been concerned our kids would be weird, poorly socialized or never learn to read but those worries quickly resolved themselves. Soon, he was more interested in the budget. Starting down a path that didn’t honor my marriage would have been a recipe for disaster.

Finally, I shared the well prayed and planned year with our kids. A plan is kinda like that little light God gives us and we need to let it shine, at least in our house with the people who are going to use it. Children are more likely to excel when we effectively communicate our expectations through sharing the plan. Older kids would have already had a part in the planning knowing that mom and dad had final say. Older kids can easily weigh in on curriculum and schedule. For the littles, I always tried to balance the things they might perceive as difficult or dreadful with things they would naturally be excited about so they too could get behind the plan and look forward to the year. Have you ever worked hard at something that someone else asked you to do only to learn you’d done the whole project wrong? It’s frustrating and disappointing and, if repeated, can undermine our relationship with that person. When provided with an overview of the school plan and daily leadership, students have a better chance of high achievement. No matter your schooling style, pick a period of time for your school and set out a plan for the day, week, month or year. When you clearly communicate the plan to your kids in age-appropriate, understandable ways you are also training them to follow a instructions and preparing them for excellence in many areas of life.

Through the years I have utilized several different planning methods. With younger children I appreciate an old fashioned paper method of planning. I always enjoyed selecting one that I wanted to look at for the whole year, something with stickers and colors and loads of room for writing notes. Find yourself an academic planner for teachers that you love and schedule out your lessons for the whole year or at least the time from the start of school till the new year. Review the scope and sequence of each curriculum you chose. The scope generally explains a high-level overview of what will be covered across the curriculum. The sequence will explain the order material is presented. Take each curriculum section by section or unit by unit and assign each lesson or unit a date and time. Think about how many days you will plan to be schooling and if all the lessons will fit into that number of days. Count twice to be sure. Do this for each subject.

If that sounds daunting, don’t panic. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, right? So breathe. There are methods to this madness! I promise. My favorite method of planning was to procure all or most of my books by August (if not earlier but, really, it was August usually) and then my amazing husband would take our children away for a long weekend. I’d be in our home, alone, with the books and my exciting new Teachers Plan Book and some fresh Frixion markers. I’d start my days with coffee and uninterrupted devotions then flow into school planning, order Chinese food and drink a glass of wine at night to celebrate the beautifully made plan. He’d leave with the munchkins on Friday evening and return Sunday afternoon and I’d have the core of a plan for three kids in three different grade levels sketched into that planner with extra ideas snuggled in there on colored PostIt Notes Seriously, this is such a fond homeschool memory! I encourage you to think of what would work for you to find a space of peace and concentration.

You do not have to follow the order prescribed in the curriculum scope and sequence but you will need to be careful when you mix it up. You will want to double check that your student has all the information needed and is prepared for each lesson after you have skipped something. For example, you won’t want to teach a unit on run on sentences before teaching the primary parts of speech. I once condensed a full year of Algebra into a summer by reviewing the table of contents and removing lessons that were supplemental to algebra such as box and whisker plots and probability. After taking out lessons that weren’t simply algebra, I counted up the remaining lessons, counted the number of days we were planning to learn Algebra and determined how many lessons we needed to cover each day if we wanted to finish the book in one summer. Because it was a small season of teaching, I put each date we’d learn along the left column of a Google Sheet. In the middle columns I put unit numbers to be covered and the problems we’d work to practice the concepts since I didn’t think we’d need to work every problem to pass the class.

Mixing up the sequence of a curriculum might feel like Advanced Level Homeschooling but I suspect you’ll get the hang of it quickly. I often will mix up the timing of our history lessons to fit an upcoming holiday. I also like to teach civics classes in election years. Science lessons about space are perfectly nested next to a space launch, eclipse or comet sighting. If a community field trip is nearing, I’m eager to make time for a unit study that prepares us for the activity. A little schedule juggling has always paid off!

Hold your plan loosely! Years ago, God showed me that I might make plans but it was really His plan that was going to unfold. I learned that I was more content with my days when my expectations were for Him to deliver what I needed than for me to be too attached to my own expectations. Sister, this was never more true than with my homeschool plan. When filling in your shiney, new teacher planner use pencil or erasible pen so you can make changes. Changes will come! Soon you’ll be adjusting for sick days, spontaneous play dates or just a change of pace.

Once you’ve made some plans, be sure to communicate this to your student. If they are very young, make a simple poster or folder they can reference. As they grow, transition to planning guides that look more like what you expect they will use with an employer. By the time my kids were in high school, I expected them to employ the family electronic calendar so that we could know where they were and a contact number for the adult in charge of that activity in case of an emergency. Setting clear expectations about how the plan will be administered and patiently training kids to use the plan is helpful and rewarding.

And you are welcome, my friend. I saved the pictures from my cow eye dissection class (bonus gag) for another conversation. If you have questions about planning, dissection class or you wish to share some feedback on my blog, please email ! I look forward to hearing from you.