Homeschool Planning III: The Overall Plan

The next thing I like to do is to print out a calendar and map out my year.

1. I determine my first day of school.
2. Then I determine what days I am taking off for Thanksgiving, Christmas & Spring Break and any other pre-planned vacation I know I will be taking. Or if we are adding a child etc....
3. Then I take my unit study My Father's World and I write the unit weeks on the calendar. This gives me an approximate end date for my school year. Additionally, anytime during the year I can check and see if we are on schedule.
4. Most curriculum have either 160, 170 or 180 lessons so after I have numbered the weeks I number the days. This lets me know where everyone should be. I have a child that often gets ahead and I have a child that really likes to lag behind so this is a great tool I can use to encourage them in their school work. As it allows me to easily check on a child's progress by looking at my master plan.
5. Of course the best laid plans always have detours so I have scheduled in about 10 catch up days through out the year. There is an extra week at the end of the year (5 days), Monday of Thanksgiving week (6), Tues- Friday week before Christmas break (10) and if we need more then that then we will school into the summer.

So this provides me with an overview of  our upcoming school year. This usually takes me 15 minutes or so unless I have not decided when to start school. Then it could take a little longer as I have to call the dh and check his schedule etc...

This is also the time I start to think about next years planner. What should I include in my planner. What did I like about this  years planner and what didn't I like etc...

See you next Monday :)