Stay on Track With an Overall Yearly Plan

Do you plan school weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly? Whichever way you prefer it can still be helpful to make an overall yearly plan.

Why do you need an overall yearly plan in your homeschool?

• It serves as a guide for all the plans you make throughout the year.
• You can see at a glance where you’re at during the school year. Are you on course or does your child need to be more diligent in a specific subject?
• An overall yearly plan reminds you of the goals you had at the beginning of the year and helps you stay focused on them. 
• If you had to take a break from school because of illness or other life happening, you can easily see where you left off and pick right back up.

What should be included in an overall yearly plan?

The good news is you don’t have to go into deep details in an overall yearly plan. It’s an overview not a yearly lesson plan. It should include:

Course of Study for Each Child

A course of study shows what subjects your child will be studying that school year and what materials you plan to use to teach each subject. It’s also great to keep in your child’s portfolio as a handy reference to what you’ve studied each year.

Here’s a template for a course of study you can use:

Reading List

Make a reading list for each child that is reading on their own or a book list to work through with your younger children. Include all of the books you would like them to read during the year.

Give your children their own copies of their reading lists so they can mark them off as they finish them. Something as simple as marking off the books they’ve finished can help them stay motivated and feel accomplished. Plus you can easily see if they are spending enough time reading to get through the list by the end of the year.

Number of Lessons Chart

Make a chart to keep track of how many lessons should be finished each week to stay on course throughout the school year.

• How many weeks are in your school year?
• Divide the number of lessons in each subject by the number of weeks in your school year to give you an idea how many lessons should be completed each week.

# of lessons ÷ # of weeks = how many lessons should be completed each week

For example:

• 16 science lessons ÷ 32 school weeks = 1/2 a lesson each week that should be completed or 1 lesson every 2 weeks
• 160 math lessons ÷ 32 school weeks = 5 lessons of math that should be completed each week

So a simple chart to refer to would like:

• Science – 1 lesson every 2 weeks
• Math – 5 lessons a week

That’s all that you need to do to make an overall yearly plan.

Use it as a reference when you sit down to make your lesson plans or as a guide to make sure you’re children are completing enough lessons each week to stay on course.

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Sarita Harbour

Sarita Harbour is a busy mom/step-mom blessed with seven kids ranging from age 29 down to five. She lives off the grid with her family in a lakefront chalet in the beautiful wilderness of Canada’s far north. Sarita is so grateful to work from home while giving her two youngest children a Christian homeschool education. She spends her days teaching, writing, and learning the ropes of homesteading off the grid. Visit her site, Off Grid Life, for free printables and resources on getting started with homesteading, off grid living, frugal living, foraging, and wilderness living skills for the whole family.