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Homeschooling has many benefits for both children and parents. The biggest of which is the opportunity to tailor-make an education specific to your child’s individual needs and interests, as well as your family’s beliefs and values. But how can you pull all of that together to create an effective homeschooling plan for your child?
Planning Makes (Almost) Perfect!
The first thing you need to do is to come up with a clear plan and set of goals for your homeschool year. It is here that one of the greatest aspects of homeschooling, flexibility, becomes one of the most difficult. Without a clear plan, you run the risk of creating a scattershot education that puts your child out of place with his or her peers. But with so much choice of styles, curriculum, and subject matter, where do you start?
Set Clear Goals
First of all, come up with a clear set of general goals. Think about why you wanted to homeschool your children in the first place, and what you want them to get out of the experience. What, generally, do you want your child’s education to encompass?
Once you have answered these general questions for yourself, begin to split your child’s education into various subject areas. For each subject area, you want to come up with a timeline and set of goals. You should also take into account your child’s interests and what they want to learn this year.
Homeschooling allows you and your child to learn together, creating not only a valuable learning experience but strengthening family bonds. Taking the time to include your child’s interests in your planning means you will have a happy engaged learning as the homeschool year goes on.
The Curriculum
When planning a timeline, a standard public school curriculum for your child’s grade is a good place to start. While it is almost certainly true that one of the reasons you’ve selected to homeschool your child is to go beyond and outside this standard curriculum, you also want to make sure that your child does not fall behind his or her peers in a given subject area.
A standard curriculum also gives you an idea of what standard your child might be expected to meet at that age in school.
Look at the standard expectations for a given subject level and then work backwards: how do you want to achieve that level of knowledge by the end of the year? What are the targets for each week? By setting these targets you can establish a timeline and curriculum that allows for effective homeschooling.
You can then plan a scheme of work that leads you to these points or buy a pre-packaged curriculum that will meet your goals.
Find the joy
Of course, you should not overlook the joy of flexibility in homeschooling so you do not need to stick to a plan rigidly, but it is useful to have an outline or series of goal posts for the year.
Instead you can make a clear educational plan that allows for flexibility. Plan what your child is going to learn, but leave the “how they will learn it” some breathing room: as you begin the process of homeschooling you’ll learn how your child learns best, and can begin to incorporate this into the lessons. A clear educational plan is one of the most essential tools to effective homeschooling and will lead you comfortably through the school year and ensure your child’s learning is effective and meets the required levels.
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Homeschooling is really good as I believe Homeschooling promotes good communication and emotional closeness within a family. Homeschoolers enjoy unlimited educational resources; the world is our classroom, and resources abound in the community. Homeschooling provides a high adult/child ratio for the student. And seriously this plan is really lovely.
Having a great planning system is very important when it comes to studying, you have done an amazing job creating this one.
This is a cute printable. Homeschooling here in Philippines will start next week. I will share this to my friends. Thanks.
This planner looks very amazing. You did great work. And yes planning makes almost perfect
Very nice and well explained learning plan. Will have to start some for my kid as we still lockdown by covid. Thanks for sharing
These are all really helpful tips to make the most out of homeschooling! Thanks for sharing this interesting article with us!
The planner looks fab! I’m hoping our homeschooling will be a breeze!
Thanks for tips and ideas for home schooling. The planner was great.
I’m not exactly home schooling, but my son is taking remote classes. I’m extremely grateful that we are able to do this right now in this time of uncertainty. I feel much safer with us both at home.
This planner sounds really amazing and interesting way to manage though..glad you shared this valuable information with us..great work though..
Homeschooling can be great if you have the time to do it properly and I bet a lot will like your planner 🙂
This is helpful! My daughter starts off virtually and then will hopefully be in person in September. We are not homeschooling people.
This is helpful as I finish planning out my nephew’s English class. I love the reminder to set goals for the year.
This is awesome! I’m currently waiting on the curriculum information for my son and I purchased a planner for this purpose only! I have already started some stuff with him, but as the semester goes on I want to make sure we stay organized! Using a homeschool planner will be perfect!
I think homeschooling is the best way for kids to learn. I think the problem many parents face is time and lack of an effective plan. Hopefully, they’ll see this and figure it out.
Love this printable! I’m looking forward to hearing more from our schools so I can have a better idea of how our days will be set up.
My goal is to get my son back in school as soon as possible, however, if things do not turn out well, then I’ll homeschool him. Your information is noteworthy – thanks!
These are such great tips for all parents out there! This is added work, but necessary. Salute to all parents during this pandemic!
This is a great list and should be super helpful to those starting that feel a bit lost.
No sensible parent can afford to compromise with child’s education especially when Homeschooling is the option ahead! I have found great tips from this blog post for Homeschooling plan!
These is so helpful. I have 3 and 5 and I really need planning, setting goals and finding good curriculum.
This is a great article.homeschooling promotes closeness between a child and parents.
Here schools closed in April and all non examination classes will open next year.my son is in baby class so I just draw random things then he starts coloring.
It’s crazy how we need so many things to ensure that our children can maximize home schooling. Parents, esp the working ones, need all the help we can get.
Homeschooling seems really difficult — it’s so important to have a concrete plan to further your kids education during this time.
Thank you for sharing this. I am a primary teacher. And I agree with all these points.