Plan your homeschool year backward

The usual way to plan a year is forward: pick a start date, line up the curriculum, and see where it ends. That tends to produce a year that ends in July or one that is behind by October. Planning backward is calmer.

Step one: the number

If your state publishes a number of days or hours, that is your floor; check its official page. If it does not, choose a number that fits your family. Add about ten days for sickness and surprises.

Step two: the shape

Decide how many days a week you teach and which breaks are fixed: holidays, a family trip, a new baby. Divide the days you need by days per week to get the number of teaching weeks, then lay those weeks around the breaks.

Step three: the subjects

Now count the lessons in each curriculum against the meetings that subject will get. A 150-lesson math book meeting five days a week needs 30 weeks. A science book with 34 chapters on a two-day rhythm needs 17 weeks for one chapter per meeting, or 34 for one per week. Where something does not fit, change the rhythm or let it continue next year.

Step four: checkpoints

Split the year into terms so you stop and look at progress two to four times. A term end is a good moment for the Friday review on a larger scale.

In the app

Homeschool Up takes the school year's dates, teaching days, terms and breaks, and each subject's rhythm. It hands out lessons in order on meeting days, warns you when a subject will run out of days before its lessons, and counts days against the number you set. 15-day free trial on every plan.