(This is the eighth post in a series of planning post, and the seventh post on planning for our homeschool.)

Part of the teacher books for next year. Not all of them have been ordered or arrived yet.

The saying is "How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."  This is the stage in my planning where everything really comes together.  I have spent a ton of time trying to flesh out what our goals are for the upcoming year.  I've decided what's important to us.  I've sat down and done my homework, searching for curriculum that will meet those needs.  And now, is when I figure out how we will fit in in an entire year.  I pull out all the books I am going to be using, and start figuring out how they can be spread over the entire school year.

I have done long-range planning for the last three years.  The first year was a total fiasic.  Our fourth child was stillborn, and we did devote time to formal schooling, but basically just basic necessities, and that as I felt able to manage.  That year was proof for unschooling.  We spent alot of time reading library books, playing outside, and doing a little math and reading, but when it came time for Britt's evaluation he had progressed a great deal over the course of the school year.  So the first thing you need to know is that sometimes life happens, and you may throw absolutely all of this out.

Last year's long range planning.  I've checked off some of what we've done.

The last two years, I made did long range planning we stuck very close to the schedule.  In the 2016-2017 school year, we moved and got off on some of our planning as it took long than anticipated to get everything back together.  But with the game plan, I was able to look and see where we could double up, and which things I could delay or push off.  By the time the beginning of May rolled around, I was able to stop, having accomplished nearly everything I set out too, and still have time to prepare around the house for the birth of our fifth child.  With the 2017-2018 school year, We will have accomplished everything and more than I had hoped, with the exception of falling off schedule with bible verses since Christmas and with the exception of history.  The kids have loved history so well, rather than spending 6 or so months on Ancient Egypt we ended up spending about 14 months on Ancient Egypt.  But that kind of change to the plan is something, that I enjoy.  I want the kids to be so interested in a subject that they really retain the information. I want them to be disappointed when we check out the 374th book on Ancient Egypt only to discover that the library doesn't have any more books on the topic.

This year the two oldest made such leaps in their reading speed and ability that they covered more than I anticipated they would, and they blew through math in 5 months.  I did buy the next level of curriculum in language arts, but I opted to wait on the next math level.  Knowing the speed at which they are currently moving.  I have made plans accordingly for this coming year, and mapped out a little heavier load in those subjects than I have in previous years.


For Rebecca I planned very little.  She said she wanted to do school, but I didn't think she was ready.  I thought we'd work some on writing her letters, her learning that, and maybe do the Math U See Primer book.  Well, I quickly realized that she did want to do school, and that I wasn't going fast enough to suit her.  We pulled out all the miscellaneous workbooks, and she has gone through 7 this year.  We had some beginner math materials so we used that instead of Math U See Primer.  She has also learned more reading in the last 2 months than the kids did in their first year.  I'm concerned about keeping up with her and challenging her, so I have mapped out a fairly fast moving year for her across language arts. She also has done a little spelling this semester with the older kids, and wants her own spelling book for next year, so she's going to be using more language skills in more ways than the others did at this age level.  If we get into it though and she gets bogged down or is having too tough of a time, we can always scale back or lighten up the pace.

The first year of planning is the hardest for me, because it's hard to make a realistic plan not really knowing how they typically handle new material.  It's hard to tell how long it will take to grasp a new concept, and when they will be ready to continue on.  And that may still fluctuate from time to time.  For example, Britt had just turned 5, and was working his way through Math U See Alpha.  He was doing a lesson a week, having no trouble with new concepts.  He really didn't even need to spend a whole week on each lesson, but I wanted him to do plenty of review.  Then when we hit the week where they introduce solving for x (4+x=5), he just didn't get it.  We went through all the examples, the worksheets, got online and used the practice material there.  We spent more than a month on it, till it clicked.  Every other math lesson he has ever done has taken 3-5 days to get down pat, but that one.  We may hit a snag this year that means we have to push some of the things we've scheduled back.  But this is ideally how I'd like our school year to go.


I've also planned an insanely ambition school year to cover the Ancient Greeks and Roman's in a single year.  If I get through all of it, I will be shocked beyond all belief.  To be honest, I don't expect to get through all of this.  And it won't bother me if Greece stretches into February instead of wrapping up before Christmas, and if we don't finish Rome before the end of the year.  However, when I schedule while I want the plan to be realistic, I want to plan ambitiously.  It's not a big deal for me to have to slow down.  On the other hand, I don't want to be scrambling in the middle of the school year to figure out how to make up for finishing things far faster than I had planned.  This year was the first time that happened, and I don't want to do that again.  I'm afraid that leaving off math since February is going to hurt us when we get back into the swing.

Most curriculum I've found is set up for approximately 36 weeks, probably because alot of schools traditionally use four 9 weeks periods as their schedule.  You might recall that I have allowed for 32 weeks of school this year.  So, what do I do about the extra 4 weeks.  I'm so glad you asked.  I'll illustrate.


The first subject I sat down to plan was Math U See for the two older kids.  I know they have moved at their slowest at a pace of one lesson a week, and even though I don't yet have their books in yet, on the website I can see that there are 30 lessons in the next week.  That gives me easily 1 lesson a week, plus two extra weeks, if we have trouble understanding a concept and need some extra time.  However, I'd like to try to move through about a book and a half this up coming year.  So I'm opting to let math be the first subject I reintroduce during the summer break.  You might recall that I ease the kids back into a full blown school routine.  I've figured out that a little school work off and on in the summer, gives us some routine, and it makes starting back less of a chaotic shock.  Knowing that we are quitting by memorial day, I just work backwards based on where I'd ideally like to be at when we stop.  For Rebecca, I'm only going to shoot for one math book this year, it has 32 total lessons, that's one a week.  Very doable.

The next subject I looked at was history.  The kids love history, but it takes some planning ahead of time to be able to really implement.  I didn't make it as far as I wanted this year.  So in order to make covering the Greeks and Romans both this up coming school year more feasible, I need to cover a little more ground this summer to set the field for Greece this fall.  The kids LOVE the stories I read, and really love the crafts and activities, so by doing a little in July and August, they are going to be excited to create and do things.  They won't even realize that it's school, in fact I may get some complaint that we aren't making anything fun in June.  After that I divide up all the material on Greece over the 13 weeks from Sept-Dec.  Then I do the same for Rome over the 19 weeks from Jan-May.  Once again, there is very little chance we will move the material that quickly.  I could spend an entire school year on each of these civilizations, not just a half, but we'll see how it goes.  Rebecca will use the resources from Story of the World with us.  She's enjoyed listening and doing the coloring pictures, thuogh I don't test her on the material, and don't expect her to retain a whole lot.  As for the Homeschool in the Woods projects, most are going to still be out of her ability level, but I'll let her take part as she's able.


Next I wanted to slide some science in this year.  With the free curriculum I got from a friend that has been sitting on my shelf the last 2 years, it has a guide for 36 lessons, though it doesn't have work for every day, like my math or language programs do, so I'll review the first five short chapters in August.  It's all on material that the oldest two have learned about in the past, some of which Rebecca is familiar with.  From there I'll cover one lesson a week from Sept-May.

Finally I get to language.  This is where the bulk of my time goes.  It is more difficult for me to plan so I always leave it till last.  HOWEVER, this is the area of our school year that if I have to drop every other subject, this will be covered.  I strongly feel that reading is the foundation for EVERYTHING for the rest of your life.  You can learn anything if you can read.  This is an area that requires more work for Britt, and a slower pacing.  Ruth is fairly on par with him at the moment, so I can also schedule this aspect of their school together.  However, they take turns working one on one with me in this area.  This year's we are going back to Sing Spell Read Write, and there are 36 steps.  If I do the one review step in August, the other 35 will fit over a 32 week period, because their steps aren't weekly steps.  Some take only 2 or 3 days, and others 2 weeks.  All About Spelling has 25 steps, last year we covered 1 a day, but I'm going to allow for 1 a week this year, since the difficulty and number of rules needed increases.  Handwriting Without Tears has 24 weeks of work and recommends review the remainder of the year.  All of these can easily fit in our 32 week plan.  These two subjects are the ones that I know that I can push off and still finish in 32 weeks if I need to spend more time focusing on other subjects.  These also, if I don't have to push them off, will give me a lighter load in the Spring, when baseball starts up and everyone is kind in the mood to be done with school anyway.  Rebecca will be starting level 1 of Sing Spell Read Write this year.  I found the pacing to be much too fast for Britt and Ruth, but I'm optimistic that it will be perfect for her.  All 36 steps and the review of letter sounds should fit in a 32 week schedule.  The toughest part is that this will only work if we skip no days of reading instruction for her, which is probably unreasonable, someone will get sick at some point, there will be days with field trips, and sometimes, you just don't want to do school it's a nice day, or we get behind on house cleaning, or we want to do something out of the ordinary routine.  Her handwriting and spelling follow the same schedule as the older kids, and it will be the first thing I drop if she feels too overwhelmed.  Because while I want to challenge her, I also don't want to burn her out.


This process has been much more exact since starting to schedule our school year.  Before I was just dividing up the curriculum based off of what I thought could accomplish in a week, from say from the time I thought we'd start through May, not figuring to do any school in December or June.  But that didn't account for the weeks we'd travel or take off for other reasons.  Now, I have a more realistic expectation for what we might accomplish.