Planning Our New Homeschool Year (Part 3 of 4)

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So far we have covered in Part 1 how to set up your schedule for the year, and in Part 2 how to schedule the Morning Time Learning.

Now in Part 3 we are going to look at our Together Time studies that take place in the afternoon.

Decide What Subjects to Cover

Before we can talk about choosing curriculum or lesson planning, you have to decide what subjects you want to cover during your afternoon Together Time learning. I have found over the years that these subjects work well for this time: history, science, and literature.

This coming year we will be doing history and science studies in our Together Time learning.

I am really excited about what we will be studying!

For history we are doing Year 2 of the Good & Beautiful History Curriculum. We used Year 1 last year and absolutely loved it!

For science we are using Christian Kids Explore Creation Science. This will be the first time using any of the Christian Kids Explore series, so I am anxious to see how it goes.

We will of course be doing read-alouds together to go along with the history and science studies (because you know we love to read together)!

Now that I have decided what subjects I want to cover and what curriculum I want to use, it is time to talk about scheduling!

Decide How to Schedule Those Subjects

Our next step is figuring out how to schedule the subjects you have chosen for your afternoon Together Time learning.

After looking at the materials for history and science, I decided to rotate back and forth between history and science. We will start the year doing a unit in science, then do a unit in history, back and forth until we are done with both. It works out so that we will get through both during the school year.

I also loved this idea of planning our studies this way because it gives us variety going through the material, and it allows me to plan a unit at a time.

So take a look at the table of contents of the curriculum you want to cover. Figure out how much time you need to cover the material. How many lessons you will have to cover, and then figure out how you are going to spread it out through the year.

I again used Evernote to schedule out these units for us.

As you can see above, I created a line item for what we would need to cover each day. That way I knew how many days the unit would cover. For science, we need 2 days per lesson and for history only 1 day per lesson. So in Evernote I typed out my complete schedule for the year, rotating back and forth between science and history units.

For history, we have a read-aloud that we will read for each unit, so I placed a checkbox showing what book we will be reading aloud for each unit.

As we work through the lessons, I can check them off as we get them done. Works great!

Ok, now that I have my scheduling in place, it is time to get things ready!

Prepare Your Materials

Once you have decided on curriculum and made out a schedule, then it is time to make a list of what needs to be done to prepare and then do it!

When planning the history and science units, here is a quick checklist that I use:

Print out Student Pages
Gather and/or purchase any supplies needed
Order any books that I have to purchase
Go to our library’s catalog online and make “lists” for the books that I want to check out for each unit (that way I can easily go in and check out the books I want before we begin each unit)

I find it much easier to get these things in order before you start the school year. It makes planning throughout the year so much easier!

There have been times when I made up folders for each week with the printables we would need for that week. It just made it so much easier to be able to pull out a folder at the beginning of the week and everything I needed was right there. I wasn’t scrambling to make copies or print out printables at the last minute.

There you have it! Our afternoon Together Time studies are all planned out and ready for us to begin!