Planning for a new homeschool year can be overwhelming. If you’re anything like me, a million different resources have caught your eye and you’re trying to figure out how you can use them all! The truth is – you can’t. But what you CAN do is strategically plan what and how you’re going to teach in a way that utilizes as many fun resources as possible!
In this post, I’d love to share with you how I plan out my daughter’s homeschool years. I’ve used this strategy through homeschool Preschool and now our homeschool Kindergarten year, but I truly hope that this planning method can help ease your own planning stress regardless of the age you’re planning for!
Choose Your Routine
If you’ve done any amount of research online or on social media, you’ve probably seen a million different opinions on daily routines for homeschoolers. Some insist that routines are unnecessary. Others will insist that the strictest routine is best. My opinion? What works best for YOUR family? After all – that’s the entire point of homeschooling! Choose how and when your children learn best, and make that happen for your family.
CLICK HERE to read about our daily routine!
Choose Your Skills
Once your Preschooler is ready to start working on academic skills, it’s important to consider which skills you’ll be focusing on for the school year. Because Preschool age technically includes ages 2-5, the skills you may be working on will vary. For instance, if you’re homeschooling a 2-3 year old you may choose to focus on mostly fine motor and social/emotional skills. If you’re homeschooling a 3-5 year old like I am, you may be moving into more academic skills!
As I was planning LG’s final Preschool year before Kindergarten, it was important to me that I prepared her for a smooth Kindergarten year without loading on the pressure. So I looked up the Kindergarten skills for our state and chose skills I could easily introduce and slowly work on! (As a Texan I googled “Kindergarten TEKS” but you may Google something like “Kindergarten skills for (state)” to see what your goals are!)
If you’re homeschooling a 3-5 year old, I’d love to help take out the guess work for you! I’ve put together a FREE monthly sequence of Preschool skills! It includes all of the skills, themes and resources we’ll be working on for each month of the school year!
CLICK HERE to grab your FREE Preschool Skills Sequence!
Choose Your Planner
Now, having a planner isn’t an absolute necessity. But it sure is helpful! I like to use an editable, printable planner that can be used over and over again every year! In this planner, I plan out 2 weeks of activities using 1 theme. This allows me to plan and prep once for a 2-week chunk, and not be in a constant “prep all the things” mode.
So far, 2 weeks seems to be just the right amount of time for us to take our time enjoying our theme without rushing through it. Every day during the week I plan 1-2 activities for 6 categories – sensory bin, Bible study, Math, Literacy, Fine Motors, and Science/Social Studies. If we get to them all each day, great! If not – that’s totally okay with me!
CLICK HERE to learn more about our EDITABLE planner!
Browse our FREE Preschool plans here!
Choose Your Organization
I’ll definitely get deeper into this subject with some other blog posts, but for now I want to leave you with this – choose a form of organization that will work best for YOUR family. For us, we like to have the week’s materials in an easy-to-reach but also cute spot. We use a homeschool basket in our dining room (AKA school room) and keep everything we need right there. It’s a HUGE time saver to be able to just quickly grab your materials from your seat!
CLICK HERE to learn more about our homeschool basket!
Let’s Hang Out!
I’d love to chat and get to know you better! Come hang out with us in some of our favorite places!
So much great information and guidance. Thank you!