4 Easy Steps To Planning An Interest-Based Homeschool Year

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I came to a crossroads a few years into our homeschool journey.  I had tweaked and changed the pre-made homeschool curriculum kit so much to fit my neurodivergent kids, I wasn’t getting the time-saving benefits of buying a pre-made package.  But where do I start building my own homeschool lesson plans and still be confident my kids won’t have gaps in their learning?

When I started analyzing what was working and wasn’t working for us in each subject area, I saw many themes. 

• We loved reading together to learn history and science, 
• We got tired of topics after a few weeks and 
• It was more fun to study things of interest us than what the book told us.  
• I wanted to learn as much as possible as a family so I could still save some planning time. 

So I set out to make a plan that fit our unique family for the next homeschool year and let me tell you, the plan I made, unlocked a new love of homeschooling for our family.  It gave us the right amount of structure with plenty of flexibility for our weeks to ebb and flow with learning. I was able to embrace to different ways we learned instead of trying to make their learning fit someone else’s plan.  

Planning to homeschool with outside-the-box kids can be a challenge and feel lonely.  Their varied needs make it challenging to find a box curriculum that is a good fit.  The longer we homeschool the more confident I have become at pulling together the different resources we need for each subject. 

Step 1: Discover What is Working 

Take time to look at each child and each subject to see where they are at and if the current programs are working or need to change.  For subjects like history and science think about how each child learns and what their favorite parts of these subjects are so you can make those parts a priority in your new plan.  

For one child math has always been a constant struggle but last year’s program was a good fit so keeping that is an easy choice for them to do the next level of it next year.  I like the Sonlight Elementary Reader sets to build fluency and expose my kids to a wide range of stories early, making it is something I won’t change.  I struggle to follow through on science experiments so we often skip them, so I want to watch for ways to teach science in ways that don’t rely on me to buy a lot of supplies and run the experiments.  

Step 2: Choose Where to Simplify Your Planning!

In our homeschool, we learn as much as we can together so I look for materials that fit our age range and are adaptable for each child.  So my planning is divided into “family subjects” for everyone, and  “independent subjects” for each child.  Their independent work includes their Language Arts and Math.  These subjects for the most part follow a typical grade leveled progression.  Each child works through these at their own pace.

Our family subjects take the most time to plan as they are what we spend the most time doing.  We do History, Science, Literature, Poetry, Social Studies, Art, and Music together.  These are all subjects where I am giving them information that doesn’t have to be sequential.  

The first thing I do is brainstorm what I want the year to include.  I base this on what we have done before and what interests we want to explore as a family.  I also look at what we need to cover to be well-rounded. 

•  For History, we look at the next period of history from either a world or American viewpoint. 
• For Science, I look at what areas we haven’t studied in a while and what their interests are.  
• For Literature, Art, and other areas I look for material that holds their interest, and I collect my notes on my brainstorm page.

I need to keep in mind what my outside-the-box kids are like, they often want more and deeper information than what I often find advertised for their ages. I love using audiobooks for our theme and finding activities to go with for our history, and then I plan the pace at which we go through the books.  For Science, I have found Unit Studies to be a good approach.  We can pick a topic and study it as long as we want, how we want, before moving on to a different topic.

Step 3: Create a Big Picture Plan for Your Homeschool Year

After I have ideas gathered, I look for how to teach them and start deciding when we will study them and add them to my school year overview page.  My overview page is a spreadsheet with the year divided into 6-week blocks across all the subjects.  This provides me with a loose plan for the homeschool year.  

The Story of the World history book we want to use will take us all year to read, I can assign suggested chapters to each 6-week history block to keep us on pace for the year.  

Planning by term also allows me to think about which units we might only do for a short time and not study all year, and how the shorter units fit together.  

We filled one of our subject blocks with 12 weeks of US Geography, followed by 3 weeks on the Election followed by 8 weeks of Poetry to fill the year.  I make sure to write all my plans with my favorite erasable Frixon pens so we can make adjustments later.

Some things I want to teach will fit best to be taught at a specific time of the school year.  When I’m writing this we are in a presidential election year, so I made sure to make space to study government and the election process in the fall so we could prepare to watch and discuss Election Day in November and the Inauguration in January.  Other subject areas don’t matter as much with the seasons. 

As we enter middle school and prepare for high school requirements I’m using the Big Fat Notebooks as a guide to make sure we are covering all of the science topics so they have the foundation they need for more advanced classes later.

Step 4: Plan 6 Weeks at a Time

With a general road map in front of me, I can plan each block of our homeschool year.  I like using 6-week chunks with a rest week in between to reset for the next block. I look at the activities and subjects we assigned to the term at the beginning of the year and start to write those details out by week.I have one spreadsheet of our Family subjects which I cross off as we do them, and a second page I use to create the road map for each child’s independent work and other activities including holidays, field trips, travel plans, or big home projects that need space during the term.  

When I’m planning each week’s details I like to use a spreadsheet on the computer so I can adjust it as needed.  I make small weekly adjustments on Friday as we wrap up for the week in preparation for the following week.  At the same time, I also print all the needed worksheets for the term at once.  This simplifies my Sunday night prep each week and isn’t as wasteful as printing for the whole year and changing mid-year.

I’ve pulled together the planning pages I use to plan our year from scratch with you so you can also use them to plan a homeschool year that is a perfect fit for your unique family.  Download our planning kit and start planning your perfect interest-based homeschool year!