12 Steps for How to Plan Your Homeschool Year
Are you gearing up to plan your upcoming homeschool year? Here’s a 12 step plan that will get you totally excited about planning!
When Walmart starts to clear away the picnic baskets and beach towels, they roll in massive towers of glue sticks and spiral bound notebooks. Ah, the smell of new curriculum and sharpened pencils completely excites me. No really. That and homeschool planning make me smile.
As a former teacher, I could hardly wait for each new year to start! I loved spending the summer planning, changing, evaluating and even writing new units to study. Absolutely none of that changed when I became a homeschool mom. I still love the start of the new year! There are very few things that I would consider more exciting than planning your homeschool year!

While it’s still 1000 degrees and the popsicles are melting before they come out of the package, make good use of your air conditioner and get ready for next year! For as the saying goes, if you fail to plan you plan to fail!
Where there is no vision, the people perish. Proverbs (29:18)
Today I’m going to share with you a 10 step plan that will get you totally excited about homeschool planning this year. It’s not gospel or fail proof, by any means. But it has worked for me and many others and adds great potential to your homeschool.
Homeschool Planning Steps
1. Pray.
I’m not counting this as official step, because you will likely want to pray before every one of these steps. But I can’t make suggestions on planning a school year without pointing out how important it is to make sure that you allow God to order your steps. He has great purpose in your homeschool!

2. Set overall goals.
Goals are the SINGLE most important factor of success. Do you have clearly defined goals for your homeschool? Do you know why you are doing this? Where you want your students to be in 10 years? What you want them to leave your home with?
Yes, even if you only have a kindergartener or if you are a seasoned veteran of 20 years, knowing where you are headed is crucial. So don’t neglect this step. I highly recommend writing down your goal(s) and posting them somewhere. When burn-out rears it’s ugly head, you can glance at your goals and remember why you are doing this.
If you need help with this step, check out this great series on homeschool goal setting.
3. Confirm that your methods meet your goals.
I don’t like to put myself in a box, and often picking a method feels that way. But a method isn’t the law, it’s more of a backbone, a support system of things that you enjoy doing in your homeschool. Our backbone method is classical mixed with Charlotte Mason, but I reserve the right to use any method I like to get a point across! While I imagine you would like that right too, as you do your homeschool planning, I would still humbly suggest that you consider choosing a “backbone” method. Something that generally defines the methods that you prefer. It just makes selection of curriculum much easier.
4. Evaluate last year.
Jot down the answers to these questions and really pray over what went well this past year and what needs improvement.
- How did I MEET these goals?
- In what ways did I FAIL to meet these goals?
- Is there an activity, curriculum or method that needs to be removed?
- Is there something that was lacking?
- Is there something that I need to fit in so that I can better meet my goals?

5. Evaluate students.
The point of this is not to stress you or the kids out. But it’s great to see how much progress you’ve made. Standardize testing honestly tells you very little about how your child is doing. Informal assessments provide much better information. They help to identify areas that you might need to improve in.
If you need a simple way to assess your 4–8-year-old’s progress, the Primary Homeschool Planner includes built-in tools for tracking growth in math, language, and life skills—without the overwhelm. It’s an easy, practical way to see where your child is and what to work on next. Take a peek here!
6. Set your annual schedule.
This is not a mandatory step, because you can easily determine this as you go. However, many homeschool moms prefer to establish terms and breaks at the start of the year. You can use a yearly calendar or planner to color-code your breaks or holidays.
In my state, I am required to chart 180 days, so this is one way to make sure we get those in without having to do school in July!
7. Decide on a planner that works for you.
You need a planner that works for you. Plain and simple. If you don’t like it, you won’t use it. So, I believe this is a crucial area of research. Find something that you can fall in love with.
Most importantly, find something that helps you reach your vision without tying you down the desk every day. There is NO NEED to write in a daily lesson planner. That’s the kids’ job!
After trying almost every planner out there, I decided to create a homeschool planner that could meet all of my homeschool planning needs: the Organized Homeschool Planner. This planner breaks free from the daily parent planner, putting the responsibility back in the kid’s lap. But it doesn’t kick planning to the curb completely.
You’ll plan all of the annual stuff and do it with guidance and organization. How’s that for a win-win?
When it comes to your students, our Student Homeschool Planners will help them keep up with daily tasks and plan their week around various weekly activities. You can sit back and relax… or change the baby’s diaper while teaching Algebra. Haha. We all know it will be the latter.
8. Schedule a planning week.
If you can get away from it all and devote a day or weekend to planning, you will not regret it. There are lots of details to be worked out and completing some pre-planning will help you move more smoothly into the new year. Use this time to set a daily schedule and plan the course of your year (details below). You can also use this time to decide on unit studies, nature studies, or literature selections for the year. Make a list of what you’d like to cover and plug them in.
I teach you how to do this step-by-step in just 5 days during my Homeschool Planning Bootcamp.
9. Set your daily schedule or routine.
When it comes to homeschool planning, we need to set our daily schedule. But don’t be intimidated by a schedule. You can make one to fit your needs. Even if you prefer spontaneity, a routine really will help your kids and your homeschool function more effectively. Believe me, putting a schedule on paper does not tie you down or force you into anything. As a mom, you still have complete veto power.
Our homeschool schedule has taken years to perfect. We need flexibility and structure all at the same time.
10. Plan the course.
Open that new curriculum that you got at your favorite homeschool convention and get out the scope and sequence or teacher’s manuals. Decide how much you hope to finish and divide that by the number of days that you will spend on that subject.
For example, if I want to complete Math 1 this year and it has 180 lessons, then I will need to do math 4 days a week in order to finish the book by the end of May. If you completed the annual plan above, you will know exactly how many school days you have planned. But even if you don’t, you can guess.

Congratulations! Now you know how much to cover each week. For the WHOLE year! This makes your homeschool planning each week very simple.
11. Organize the room.
One might think that your room should have been organized already, but I like to do this at the end. Every year, I change enough in my homeschool that I need to rethink how shelves and other parts of our schooling area are used and organized. So it’s a good idea to do your planning first. I walk you through our entire school set up in my simple homeschool post.
12. Make a list of needed supplies so you can take advantage of the sales.
As you know, the best prices on school supplies are during back-to-school sales. Take advantage of these sales by making a list of the needed supplies while you are planning for the year and organizing your room. There won’t be any last-minute fumbling for glue sticks and rules in March if you stick up now. You can see my back to school shopping list here.
Need more help with homeschool planning?
I’ve got you covered! If you’re still needing a bit more inspiration or direction with your homeschool planning, no worries! Check out my FREE 5-day Homeschool Planning Boot Camp by clicking the image below.
You’re just 5 days away from having your BEST homeschool year ever!

Through practical tools & Bible-based resources, Kim Sorgius is dedicated to helping your family GROW in faith so you can be Not Consumed by life’s struggles. Author of popular kid’s devotional Bible studies and practical homeschooling tools, Kim has a master’s degree in education and curriculum design coupled with over 2 decades of experience working with kids and teens. Above all, her most treasured job is mother and homeschool teacher of four amazing kiddos.
Yes, PRAY and I LOVE your Printables!
This was really helpful! Thanks!
Great post! Thanks for all the links!
http://www.dearlylovedmist.com/
Very exhaustive list. I’ve checked off a few of these. Several more to go.
Fabulous information and great course of action. Thanks for sharing.
Great post! Thanks!! I’m still a nube when it comes to homeschooling so this is helpful!
I love that you posted this. But, I hate that I have to think about it already. Thanks for giving me that little shove I needed to start thinking about school again.
Thanks. Visiting from Homeschool Friday Link-Up.
Great list! I usually spend some time making goals and evaluating at my children’s birthdays. My oldest has a birthday in August, so that works well for coinciding with the start of the school year =) I need to do better planning ahead than I did last year. Thanks for the encouragement and the ideas! Also, thanks for linking up with Trivium Tuesdays!
I love the idea of evaluating on their birthdays, Amy! Thanks for sharing.
thank you, so helpful!
I was delighted to find this on pinterst today. So rich and full of wisdom!
I love your printables:)
Wow Scholaric looks lovely. It’s a little confusing but we’ll figure it out eventually lol. What does the paid version offer? I’ve been using a paper method but I love love love this (so far lol). Thank you!
Love seeing how you work through each step ? I do my school planning in very similar fashion although I am online schooling. Have a wonderful start to a new school year.
Thank you very much and God bless us all.
HI! This is amazing! Thank you! The link in #6 Annual Planning: for printable school year calendar is for 2023-24, I could not find the 24-25 year. Do you have a different link or site for that? I love how the one you provided offers the color key and making your own highlights. I just need an update. Thanks
Hi Janell. It doesn’t look like they have updated their resource yet, but hopefully that will be available soon! We don’t currently have a different resource for this, but you might be able to find something online. 🙂
Thank you. I needed this Calendar:)