Choosing a Homeschool Curriculum (and Keeping Your Sanity) – Part 2

You can find the first four steps of my planning process here!

At this point I now have a list of topics I would like to cover for each child, as well as notes for each topic telling me if I have the materials on hand already, or listing a new curriculum or book I would like to use.

Continuing on:

5) Before purchasing any materials, I make a rough schedule or routine for each child of how I think our week might go. This helps me to see if a) I’ve got way too many subjects and need to remove some and b) if the new curriculum I’m thinking about will fit within my week. For example, I may want to do a new science course that says to plan for 3 days a week, but I can only fit 2 days of science into my week right now. This doesn’t mean I can’t still choose this course but it’s worth thinking about how it will practically fit into my life before I buy it.

A few notes about this schedule:

• I am not a slave to the schedule and it will almost certainly change once we get going and see how these subjects work in real life. At this point it is only an Educated Guess.
• I leave a LOT of margin: subjects are only scheduled for four days, and I don’t pack in the days too heavily. I could plan to cover six topics five days a week and only get to five of them and feel continually behind – OR, I could plan to cover five topics Monday through Thursday, then add in one more on some days when we have a little extra time, and feel accomplished and ahead of the game. Which would you prefer?
• Having a preschooler and a baby in the house means that I must also think about when all this school will happen. I don’t have a set-in-stone time frame but I am mentally running through our options and making sure I don’t set my expectations too high. Right now we are planning to do most of our sit-down work during Baby Sister’s independent playtime in the morning and her nap time in the afternoon.
• Less is more. I want to leave plenty of room for real-life learning, play time, outside time, and free reading. In comparison to this 2nd grade schedule, my schedule for our almost-6-year-old Kindergartner has 3 subjects a day, and our 4-year-old preschooler will have 1 subject a day (which I expect to take a grand total of 5 minutes). They will not start most of the subjects listed below until first grade.

6) Now that I know which materials I want, and how they will fit into our schedule, I will think about our budget (and discuss with the husband!) and then order them. Woohoo! And it feels like Christmas every time a box with new curricula is delivered to our porch.

Warning: often there is a problem with this step. There is something I would really like to do, but I can’t fit it into our schedule or our budget, or both.

Gahhh woe is me this year will be a failure and my children will learn NOTHING.

Actually, this is a great opportunity to be creative. Can I find something similar for cheaper, or free? Or make my own? Can I get that expensive book at the library? Can I fit in that unit study over Christmas, or during the summer, or ask dear husband to spend some special time working on it with the children during the weekend? Homeschooling gives us more flexibility than we initially realize and there’s nothing wrong with taking full advantage of it.

7) We hold our curriculum lightly and realize it is our servant (not our master), because sometimes we will find that something we chose isn’t working for our family. How frustrating! But I am including this step because it happens to everyone, even with the best planning. I’m all for giving new materials a solid chance and not giving up at the first difficulty – but it’s also not worth struggling through a whole year with something you hate. You and your child might be happier if you give it up and look for something that is a better fit! Consider the money that you spent to be an investment into your Personal Research and Teacher Development – you now know your own teaching style, likes/dislikes, and your child’s learning style even better, and that is valuable.

There you have it! This is how I’ve planned our third homeschool year, and I am very much looking forward to getting started. Each year so far has gotten exponentially more interesting as our children change and grow, and as I change and grow as a teacher. At this moment I am also more grateful than I’ve ever been before for the freedom to homeschool. Our world feels so uncertain this year as we grapple with racial tensions, a presidential election, a global pandemic and a myriad of other divisive issues – but we’ve still got the freedom to learn together at home in our own beautiful little corner of the world and I’m so thankful to do so.

Originally written July 23 2020