I cannot function without an end goal in mind when it comes to homeschooling- or anything else for that matter. I like order and organization, therefore I want my children’s schooling to be done with intention and focus. Seeing the big picture of my homeschool year is what helps me take one purposeful step at a time.

The big picture of homeschooling begins with thinking about what is really important and what you want your outcomes to look like. I see it in my mind like a rainbow. The big picture is like an overarching arching rainbow were you can track from beginning to end  –and hopefully the iris a pot of gold at the end. The pot of gold is the end point where you have achieved the key outcomes you intended to from the beginning.

Planning for my homeschool year starts with lots of prayers. I want to get the Lord’s guidance on what the main things I would like my kids to accomplish by the end of the school year. This year the major things I wanted my kids to come away with was their core subjects (Math, Grammar/Writing, Reading, History, and Science), to grow a love for God’s Word, and focus on one extracurricular for the whole year (that they picked). My daughter picked to work on her skills in playing the ukulele and my son, of course, was to play rugby.

From these overarching things, I then can build my lessons upon them. Planning a big picture approach for your homeschool allows you the flexibility you need to plan lessons under the major aspects of the homeschool year.

According to your state requirements, some of the subjects may not have much flexibility. For instance, you may want to look into what your children, at their age, need to know for math or language arts and reading. However, the flexibility in the big picture approach is that kids can choose what extracurricular they want, what books they want to read, and what science topics they find most intriguing.

How to see the big picture of homeschool planning is the fun part. I love to plan the overarching needs of the year, then see the kids progress throughout the year. Having a visual of what they do when they begin, how much they have left throughout the year, and reaching their endpoint really gives my kids, AND ME motivation to get there.

I have comfort in making this a reality with using Homeschool Planet’s online scheduling for home, school, and work all in one place. Homeschool Planet truly has all your planning needs, when you need it, and available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

The big picture of my homeschool year is laid out for each of my family members in our Homeschool Planet calendars. Once we gather what we want to learn to achieve the big picture goals we just dump it all in the Homeschool Planet calendar for the entire year to keep us focused, intentional, and accountable.

I schedule classes, assignments, chores, field trips, sports practice, doctor appointments, and music classes all in our calendars. This is really important to me because it keeps me on schedule to develop my lessons for the week, or month if I have extra time. My outline for the year is set, I know what lessons to prepare for, what field trips to set up, and what dates are known as time goes by. I love how we can adjust our schedules if we need to, and still be accountable to complete what we needed to reschedule.

After knowing what our big picture needs to look like at the end, it feels so good to create my homeschool calendar in only minutes to keep me organized. The Homeschool Planner allows us to view our calendars in the semester, term, or quarter views with an automatic and instant calculation of the number of school days per term.

I really didn’t know how much I needed Homeschool Planet until I began using it years ago. My children have their calendars set for weekly views in order to complete assignments and lessons, but I keep my calendar on a monthly view to see how the month is progressing for them.

Seeing the big picture in your homeschool year really opens your eyes into just how much you can accomplish in a school year. In the public school arena your children are confined to learn and dump. If they love a subject like Astrology, they can’t stay there for a little longer. They are forced to move on because of the need to cover every single lesson in someone else’s ideal curriculum for your child.

Homeschooling is a freedom for you to work towards what your kids are interested in while making sure they progress and keep learning. In every subject, we can point out kids back to the Creator and back to a Christian worldview.

Instead of taking your homeschool through a rigorous intense whirlwind of needing to cover subjects, focus on reaching your big picture rainbow. See how it evolved from start to finish to see the prize at the end–happy, healthy, learning kids.

At last — an easy, flexible, full-featured online planner that doesn’t require hours to learn. Just launch, click on the calendar, and start adding classes, assignments, and appointments!

With Homeschool Planet lesson plans, homeschooling has never been easier!