4 Ways to Lesson Plan in your Homeschool
Lesson planning is an important part of our homeschool days. Depending on your curriculum and homeschool style, though, lesson planning may look quite different from one homeschool to another.
Planning our lessons helps us to know what is coming up in our homeschool days. It also ensures that we don’t arrive at the end of our homeschool year only to realize we didn’t complete everything we had hoped to do that year.
Plans that are already written for you
If you purchase an all-in-one boxed curriculum, lesson planning is likely to be pretty easy for you. Those programs usually come with complete lesson plans, so all you need to do is review them ahead of time, make any notes for yourself, and gather your materials.
Open-and-go Curriculum (but no plans)
Probably the largest category of curriculum is those that are mostly open-and-go but don’t include detailed plans. Examples of this type include Math Mammoth, Explode the Code, Story of the World, and Real Science Odyssey. Besides assigning the lessons to particular days, reviewing it, and gathering your materials, there is little other work for you to do.
Pre-written Plans...That Need Tweaked!
Whatever type of curriculum you choose, most of us end up doing a little (or a lot!) of tweaking. Some ways you may want to modify your curriculum:
- change the pacing
- add/remove extra literature/non-fiction
- add documentaries
- add more/reduce the amount of art
These modifications usually require little extra work for the parent but they can add quite a bit to your studies.
Putting Together Your Own Creations
This type of lesson planning is definitely the most time-intensive but also the most personalized way to homeschool. You can do this by the subject or by creating larger studies that cover multiple subjects.
As you put together your own studies, you’ll want to keep in mind:
- the time you have available each day & length of the topic study
- your students’ best learning styles
- your teaching style
- strengths & weaknesses
