 Hey you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video I will be sharing how I plan my homeschooling year. So if any of you guys are new here to my channel again my name is Brittany. I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls. I will be entering in my fourth year of homeschool you guys. This upcoming homeschool year I will have a sixth grader, a candy gardener, and a pre-care. So I just really wanted to walk you guys in the steps that I take in planning my homeschool year. This is going to be a video that's going to be broken down into two parts. In today's video I'm going to share with you how I schedule out my year at a glance. So like my whole year overview of how I plan that out. I'm going to share with you guys my quarterly plans that I do because I do follow the Sabbath homeschooling schedule in my homeschool where I do six weeks on and we have a one week off break and I will get into further details in that later in today's video. And I'm also going to share with you guys my daily schedule like my daily flow. I really feel like I love to I guess target those three main areas in my beginning planning process because it really helps me figure out everything else. In my second planning video I will go over like my curriculum overview how I break down each piece of curriculum for each child and things like that and how I actually plan out my quarter. So that will be like a more detailed video and I'm going to do that in my part two video. So you will really get a good glimpse of me planning out the start of our homeschool year. And I think I really want to make more planning videos this upcoming homeschool year so you guys can really see I guess how I planned out my quarter. And then when I do my monthly update you kind of see what we actually tackle versus what I actually plan because those are really cool videos to watch. So for me in the state of Georgia I do have to follow a specific homeschooling requirements. And I think that's my first tip that I will give you guys. And I know you hear it on repeat all the time which is look up your state standards. And I definitely will recommend you guys to look up your homeschooling state standards. And I always look them up yearly because you never know if any state requirements or any of your homeschooling laws may change yearly. So I definitely make sure I go on to the Georgia Board of Education's website. I typically don't go on HSLDA how it's a good hub. However I like to go to my specific state's website because you get more details about the specific laws. And if any of you guys are Georgia homeschooling families I will go ahead and link the website that I use in this website. We also have our Georgia Declaration of Intent form that we have to fill out for the state of Georgia. Pretty much we're just notifying the state of Georgia's Board of Education that we are homeschooling our kiddos. It's a simple form that we have to fill out where we have to put our child's name, their age, our address. We have to put the dates that we intend to homeschool. So for the state of Georgia we have to homeschool for 36 weeks or equivalent of 180 school days. And when we fill out our Georgia form of Declaration of Intent we have to give specific dates. And what I typically do is I put in the maximum amount of dates that I can. So for me for the state of Georgia I put our start date for July 3rd 2023 and our end date of June 30th 2024. So pretty much I'm giving myself a full year to meet the 180 day requirement of days to homeschool. So I really like giving myself that huge buffer. So even though I'm not starting my homeschool year on July 3rd anything that I do because I am a year around homeschoolers that I would say okay this was considered a full homeschooling day I will go ahead and check that off as one of our homeschooling days. So that is like how I fill out my Georgia Declaration of Intent because I get so many questions about that. Now for me I am in a testing year for the state of Georgia we have to do standardized testing every third year starting off at the third grade. So that means that I would have had to do a standardized test for Brielle my oldest order in the third and now we're in the sixth grade. So typically we have to pick a test supplier and I will go ahead and link down below in my description box test suppliers that is approved for the state of Georgia and for me I'm still trying to figure out which test I do want to use this upcoming homeschool year for Brielle. I'm thinking about either doing the map test or doing the Stanford 10 test. The difference between those two is the map test will test her in reading math, reading comprehension and language. However the Stanford 10 test will test her in all of her subjects across the board where she will be doing reading math, language, arts, science and history. So my husband is actually leaning more towards doing the Stanford 10 test since we have always tested her reading language and writing just so we can get a bigger overview of how she is doing in history and in science and I'm kind of like indifferent I really don't know so those are two test publications that are approved from the state of Georgia that we will be looking into using at the end of the school year and I do my standardized testing in May which is typically are in month for our school year. So you guys I'm going to go ahead at this point and flip you guys around I'm going to share with you our calendar I'm going to share with you my planner and all the nitty gritty things of our planning out my homeschooling year part one. Okay you guys this is actually my year at a glance schedule I decided to go ahead and save you guys like the time of me actually like highlighting and showing you guys like the breakdown and how I actually plan out my year to just show you guys my printable. So I typically print off this paper right here this is a free printable from paper trail and I will go ahead and link this down below because if you don't have a homeschooling planner this is a perfect way for you to I guess plan out your overview of your year for completely free and this is kind of like what I did for a while because last year was really my first year using a homeschooling planner so yeah so this is how I would plan out my homeschooling year so this is actually my second year doing the six weeks on one week off schedule and this is how my year overview looks. Now I am very flexible with this schedule because things can change and this is how it looks right now but I may decide I want to start school a little bit later or not so this is just a overview so I'm going to zoom you guys in so you can kind of see my actual schedule a little bit better but right now I kind of pushed us back our tentative start date is actually going to be on July the 24th and what I do is I actually count out six weeks from there so this is one two three four five and six so our first week break that we're going to be having is really cool it falls on Labor Day week so which is really cool this is our first week off so we did six weeks strong and then I kind of like go from there so then we have one two three four five six here goes our like fall or October break right when we're getting like fatigued and then I love scheduling us out like this for November where I split up our six weeks so we'll do three weeks and then we'll have our whole week off for Thanksgiving and then we have four five and six now I went ahead and I have an extra buffer week right here and I'm going to share with you guys why I went ahead and have seven weeks in this term instead of six here is our Christmas break that I typically do we typically take two weeks off for Christmas and I love having our Christmas break go into January because this is Alana's birthday my baby girl's birthday and I love having that week off to like clean and to clutter my house and to really have and start off a good year and typically like around Christmas time after Christmas is when I kind of like want to do a house reset and so that's typically the time that I use this first week in January to do and I don't really feel the pressure to like come in first day of the year starting strong with our homeschooling year so from here because I have this seven week buffer I will only do five weeks and this is really good because when you're starting off your homeschool year you're kind of like tired you want to you know start off strong but I typically give us this buffer so right here in February we will have our week off and then kind of going from there right here I have another kiddos birthday Leia's birthday is right here and I decided since her birthday was on Thursday we'll go ahead and take off a Friday and then it'll kind of like lead into like our spring break right here so our spring break is the first week of April then I have us doing our last six weeks strong and typically right here this last week we typically won't be doing curriculum for my oldest order this is the week I typically use for testing so we will be actually finishing off all of her curriculum on the 10th of May and then right here is testing and then this is our two week break that we take in preparation for like our summer school or our summer schedule because I do like us to do a summer schedule so this right here I have it blocked off as a buffer because at the beginning of the video when I was telling you guys how I have from July 3rd all the way until technically the 30th but I'm going to say 28th because that falls on the weekday to get 180 school days for Braille so if we have any sick days or anything like that these are like my buffer days so I can push back this into June so I have all the way up until June to count a school day which I love that flexibility so even though this is my schedule that I have planned if I have anything that changes I definitely have room to change to shift things around so um yeah okay you guys I forgot to mention in the six week buffer that I have on our weeks off I do want us to do some field trips this year and here are some of the field trips that I mapped out for us the Tellus Museum we actually already went to the Tellus Museum on July the 6th so since we did that and we were at the museum for about four hours we watched like a live show in the um planetarium I'm actually counting that as a school day for Braille so that's why I have it blocked out on my calendar this six that's what that means so um we already did our first field trip of the school year I have us set up to go to the Martin Luther King Center and tour his house since we are in Georgia I want to go to the Children's Museum now this one's more geared towards my younger kiddos um because it's not really much for Braille but hopefully she'll be okay tagging along in this you know adventure with us I have the Atlanta Zoo where I want us to go to because we get free zoo tickets every summer so we're going to utilize our free zoo tickets I have us going to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights Museum which is a really cool museum that's downtown next to the Georgia Aquarium and I've always seen it they have great artwork displayed there and I think Braille will love that one and then the firm bank science museum of um it's like a science museum a natural history museum I think they will enjoy that all and that's like for all ages so these are six field trips that I have planned so hopefully I can squeeze them in in between this school year so technically I already did one so um any times we have a week off I definitely want to go ahead and um schedule out for us to um do one of these field trips and for the MLK Center you guys uh Martin Luther King Day in January that will be a great time for us to go to the MLK Center so that will probably be a field trip I would do in January um so yeah so uh these are like some of the field trips that I have scheduled tentative hopefully we can get to them if not this is just a plan so you guys this right here is my homeschooling like my weekly and my daily schedule for my kiddos and how I have broken down things I'm really happy that I have done summer school with the kiddos and we've been you know dabbling into a little bit of phonics and reading for uh my Kenny Gartner and then for my sixth grader Brie we've been just doing a little math and grammar and reading I mean reading across the board for everyone so I'm really able to kind of like gauge like the flow that I can do especially uh with my big age gap with my kiddos so um this right here is uh again my homeschool schedule this is a free template from Canva so right here I have scheduled for Brielle to go ahead and do her math because she can do that independently without me and then we will officially start off our school day with our younger ones after they've gotten dressed and everything like that at nine where we will go ahead and do our bible morning time breakfast things like that after bible morning time we will clean up from breakfast and then that will be Alana and Lea's um morning calendar time for Brielle she can go straight into all of her independent work so I have fixed grammar word roots her oak metal english she definitely will be able to start that off on her own because she can go ahead and start doing her assigned literature reading or any assignments on that she can do independently because this curriculum is written towards the student uh during that time where Brielle's working independently I'm going to kind of be switching off between my younger two doing math with them I have Brielle still again doing language arts from 10 30 to 11 however long it takes my kiddos the younger ones will get a break um and then I will go ahead and do phonics with both of the younger ones and handwriting with Lea so as you guys can see the younger kiddos they're pretty much done after about like what an hour and a half and they are free to do independent play this is when I will come in between 11 and 11 30 with Brielle check over any work from English and we may or may not start um history or science it just depends and uh from there we will I guess depending on like it just depends on the day you guys because she may have all this stuff done completed and we can go into that or I may have to check and work a little bit longer on English it just depends so uh what I have right here is we typically do lunch time uh between 11 30 and 12 my kiddos are ready to eat lunch and this is a typical time that I will put our read aloud on uh for us to listen to on audible we take a big break we go outside uh sometimes I just play music if it's raining the kids dance they get all their wiggles out and my younger two will go down for quiet time after we have like this you know big break in between our school day then I will I have to slot it out for Brielle to be either working on history or science I typically do history and science two days out the week so like Monday Tuesday would be a science day and then history would be Wednesday Thursday it's typically how I schedule it out because I don't want Brielle to be doing all five of her subjects every single day I like us to kind of like do our core which is math language vocabulary uh grammar all of that all together and then uh we kind of go into either history or science because we can really focus and hone in and own those two subjects for two days and kind of like go from there it really worked out well last year uh during this time right here I have our study hall period and if you guys seen my middle school changes this is the period where we're going to be working on any type of like study hall skill note taking things like that with Brielle I have that time carved out uh after a quiet time for my younger kiddos we will go into our snack time Brielle will go into creative writing piano she's doing Spanish you guys she's been really really enjoying doing Spanish over the summertime so we're just going to go ahead and take that into our school year uh from four to seven again it's free play technology time family time and then uh Brielle does her independent assigned reading and fun reading in the evenings then for the younger kiddos bedtime at eight for the younger ones and Brielle's bedtime is 9 30 since she's older so uh this is our schedule for Monday through Thursday on the back right here I have our schedule for Friday and it pretty much looks the same as far as math and our bible and morning time the only difference is Brielle's load is a lot lighter I like to keep this day lighter because if it's any assignments that we need to drag over to Friday that's what we do on Fridays Fridays is like our library time our enrichment time um our home school hangout time so I like to keep Fridays a lot lighter so she would typically do reading detective uh for my younger kiddos um I'm not going to be doing math for phonics with them on Fridays we're just going to read on Fridays for them and this is their messy art time on Fridays for Brielle uh is when she's going to be doing um her music curriculum and or art for her as well we have a lot of free play outside reading creative writing piano Spanish all the same things it's just Friday is our typically lighter day whatever we didn't get to on Monday through Thursday it kind of falls onto this day and um this is kind of like how I like to schedule it and you guys buy it Friday you guys I don't know about you but I'm just burnt out and I'm done so I really like the lighter load on Friday so again I will go ahead and put the template that I found for this one free and link it for you guys below but this is our Monday through Thursday schedule and then this is our Friday schedule and how I tackle out our home schooling uh days on the daily okay you guys this is my home school planner that I'm going to be using I think I already shared it with you guys in my last video what I did was I went ahead and I took off the bind it and I spiral binded it myself I was so nervous you guys but it actually came out okay I made a few mistakes but it was my first time it's perfectly fine so this is the home school planner that I'm going to be using again this home schooling year I have my erasable pens these are some generic erasable pens they're a lot cheaper than the other brand what is it the fix fix are on or whatever brand I forgot what it's called but um these are cheaper I will link these down below and you get more pens and they work just as well um I do have my um erasable highlighters that I like to use as well these I didn't find an off brand for this one so I just got the pilot ones for this so that's my favorite I have my big old bin of washi tape that I have been using this is from last year you guys so I'm really really excited I love using washi tape when I do my reflections pages so I'm going to go ahead and just give you guys an overview of how my planner looks I haven't actually written in it yet but in my next video I will show you guys how it actually looks because I will be playing out like my curriculum and you'll actually see everything but I kind of wanted to give you guys like a blank overview of how the school next planner does look so um here is the beginning part where you can do like your index or your overview pages right here she just has them blank uh right here this is my calendar so what I'm going to do is now that I have finalized my actual school year calendar I will go ahead and translate it right here my field trips what I would do is I'll go ahead and write them out right here that I want to do for the kiddos um it has an attendance record right here and this is perfect for me because I do again have to count out 180 days of school so in the beginning it has her it has any classes that the kiddos are taking none of my kiddos are taking any particular classes brielle's doing piano but that's online so this page I probably will like uh put washi tape and use it for something else because I love the you know flexible flexibility of this calendar curriculum overview what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and highlight all of the core curriculum for each kiddo so this might be brielle's page leah's and alana's page um I have the book list you guys I love doing the book list where I like print off a little teeny picture of the book and put it on these pages so um I'm really really excited I think what I'm going to do this year is just highlight our favorite books and then um I'll just go ahead and write out our full book list on like maybe the last page so maybe the first two will be our fun and then the last page I'll just write out all the books that we've read um it's so fun looking back at the books that we read at the end of the school year so here is the curriculum progression chart which I haven't seen many planners actually have this and this is so fun when you get done with your six week term and you get the like highlight and shade like all of the curriculum progress that you actually made so I'm going to just do the core for each of the kiddos mainly for brielle and leah not necessarily alana um here is the month in review so mine's is going to start off in july and I can just kind of like fill it out and get it started so it's all of the months right here I kind of put a little wash tape on the side because I was trying to see if I like that style so it has all of the months and then uh when you get done with all the months you go into your weekly overview so here let's keep on going so you guys can see a weekly overview okay all right so here goes the weekly overview so your week will start off with your weekly overview and this is the page I would do like my reflections and pictures of the kiddos you can do your weekly goals and note taking your schedule monday through sunday oh wow that's cool so she even adds the weekends there um that's cool because if you do a field trip on the weekend you can kind of like add it there for your week and then this page right here is your weekly plan and like I said I will show you guys how I set up this weekly plan for my kiddos I like to reverse plan so what I would do is I would just write like math and uh write like math with confidence math you see primer for leah math for brielle I'll write a math you see zeta and I'll just write it across and then as we complete each lesson I will write down the lesson we completed so when I begin all I will be doing is just writing out the subjects and uh what I have us planned to do but I actually don't write what we do until we actually do it so this is a little glimpse inside of my planner and I cannot wait to share with you guys um how this looks when I set it up in my next video now for brielle you guys I loved using a student planner for her and this is her student planner that she's going to be using it's the same exact one it's a free printable and again I will link it down below for you guys my description box is going to be so full after today's video but this was a free uh planner student planner that I used last year and she absolutely loved it so brielle will probably come in and fill out her planner on the first day of school so uh she has like her uh student version of mine where it has like all of the courses she's checking off and she's writing the days of the week that she's going to be doing it I have um a reading log for her so she can record all of her independent fund readers in here uh this is her week at a glance so it looks pretty similar to mine and right here in the note section is typically where I will write like little notes for brielle um especially like at night when I'm planning and she's sleeping and I kind of don't want to bother her I would just write it right here so she knows okay well mommy wants me to do page number this I'll go ahead and add it right here so that's kind of like how we utilize the note section right here for me and then she fills out the rest of her weekly plan on Mondays we plan Monday and Tuesday on Tuesdays we plan Wednesday and Thursday and on Thursdays whatever we have left over she didn't finish we will go ahead and plug it in for Fridays like I was saying before so this was a completely free student planner and it worked out really really well for brielle and she's used to uh coming in filling out her planner and this really gave her a sense of independence and she didn't need me so as you guys can see like I'm working with my younger kiddos in the schedule uh brielle can look in her planner see what she has to do and say okay I can just do this next and I'm just going to wait for mommy to get done and then we will have our time together so um yeah so you guys this is how I plan out my homeschooling year and I'm so excited about my new school nest homeschooling planner thank you guys so much for watching today's video of me planning out and sharing with you guys how I plan my homeschooling year I really hope that this video was really helpful I really hope you're able to really get a good glimpse of how I keep things really really simple and flexible and planning out my homeschooling year uh that's the one beauty of homeschooling is that we do have the flexibility and I like to keep it really flexible I don't really box myself in um I really want to leave in room in my year for uh any types of pivots or changes that you know we may go through because I mean this is homeschool and life you know combined you guys so um stay tuned you guys for part two of my homeschooling planning videos and you guys as always thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye