How to Plan Your Homeschool Year: 2025-2026

How to plan your homeschool year – it’s time! I can’t believe we are already at the point in the year where I start to think about next year. This past year flew by. We still have a few weeks left, but I am itching to start thinking about next year.

The 2025-2026 Homeschool Year is going to be a wee bit different for us, because Emma is officially graduating this year. She has worked extra hard, and is planning to focus on her novel. It is amazing to think that I am graduating my first homeschooler. And wow, that went faster than I expected. I think back to the first post I ever wrote about homeschooling, and how crazy it was back then that I was considering homeschooling. But here we are, one homeschool graduate down, and two to go!

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How to Plan Your Homeschool Year: Lists

The first place that you have to start with how to plan your homeschool year is all of the lists. I know what you are thinking, I hate lists! Or maybe it is “I have too many lists as it is!” That is totally OK for you to be on either side of the list-making spectrum. But, it is the easiest way to organize your thoughts around homeschooling.

You have particular subjects that you teach each year, whether required by your state homeschool law, or because you want to teach these subjects to your kids. I know that if you go on YouTube or Instagram right now, you will be inundated with ideas on different homeschool curriculum to use. I think it is awesome that you have so many resources right at your fingertips as you try to figure out how to plan your homeschool year, but it can be a bit overwhelming.

This is where the lists come in. All you need to do is fold a piece of paper into eighths. Then write the subjects you want to focus on at the top of each box. Finally, start writing down the different resources you want to check out. You don’t need to research each one as soon as you write it down. In fact, I would advise you not to. You need a bit of space from writing down that “really fun thing!” and researching it. It gives your brain a minute to consider. While that one thing (or many things) sounds awesome, you don’t actually have the time for it. OR it isn’t awesome for your particular student.

I do most of my brainstorming in my current year’s teacher planner. I use an Erin Condren Teacher Planner. It gives me all the space I need to flesh out my ideas before moving into my new planner for the new homeschool year.

If you are struggling with keeping everything organized, I would recommend having one spot where you write down everything initially. Something like this brain dump journal or even a plain notebook. As long as it is always handy for you to jot something down when you need to. If you find a lot of digital resources and want to have a digital place to keep things as well, the notes app on your phone, or even a running email to yourself will work. The key here is that this is just a dumping ground, then you will sit down to organize all of the information you find at a specific time each week. This will make it much more manageable as you decide what you may and may not need for the coming homeschool year.

Research and Shop Your Shelves

The next step in how to plan your homeschool year is to take those lists and start researching. There may be new programs to research. Or, you may need to check your own shelves to make sure you don’t need updated resources for curriculum you already own.

This is the fun part of homeschool planning in my book. You get to look at new resources to figure out which ones will fit your family. It can also be challenging. You have to remember that just because a resource looks amazing, it doesn’t mean it will be amazing for your student. Sometimes I fall into the trap of loving something so much, but then remembering I am looking for curriculum for my kids, and not ME!

You may realize you need to change math curriculum or you need to touch on science in a new way. Or you may want to slow things way down and focus on a particular unit study for the new homeschool year and see where it takes you. Whatever the path, take the time for research ahead of time. Can you plan for everything? Absolutely not. But, taking the time at the front-end of your year will help you to manage the rest of the year.

Then, a little cheat for you, use a monthly reset day to focus on what is going well and what challenges you are having in your homeschool to make little adjustments throughout your year.

Using AI to Help you Plan

A new addition to my research for this homeschool year is the use of AI. I started seriously using AI more often in the fall of 2024, and then it just exploded. I primarily use Grok to help me plan because I already subscribe to x. You don’t have to use Grok, but you most likely will need to subscribe to the AI service you want to use so you can get the most out of it.

I think of AI as a really fast search engine. As you consider how to plan your homeschool year, you will have questions. That is where you start with AI, asking a question. Then, as you get answers, you ask more questions and refine your search. Personally, I like to search by subject and age of my kids. However, you could definitely start more generally with your homeschool goals and what you want for your homeschool year overall. The key is to refine.

This will not remove all research from your homeschool planning. But, it will give you a good head start. It can help you narrow down the curriculum you are interested in. It can also prompt new ideas. You can see an example of how I use AI in the video below.

A caveat – AI is not perfect, so please make sure that you do actually research the resources it suggests. Ask AI to help you find particular resources, but also give you links to those resources so that you can see if they are real or not. I love AI, but again, it doesn’t completely eradicate the research you still need to do.

How to Plan Your Homeschool Year: Evaluate

The next step in how to plan your homeschool year is to evaluate the year that you just went through. You may think that you should do this first, and some people do. However, when I start brainstorming for the new year, we aren’t even close to finishing the current one. So, I like to wait. If you want to do this step first, before you look for new resources, that is totally fine. I have a handy list of questions that I use every year to help jumpstart my end of year evaluation.

These questions help you see where you were excelling throughout the year, and where you may have run up against challenges.

Now, if you have been doing a monthly reset right along, you may not notice any big, glaring challenges. And that is because you have been making small adjustments throughout the year. Of course, there could still be big challenges that you were able to bandaid your way through, and if that is the case, you may need to spend a bit more time deep-diving on why that particular thing was a challenge.

What are some challenges you may have? It could be a particular curriculum that you don’t enjoy, or your student doesn’t enjoy. Or an entire subject area that may be giving you problems. Outside of curriculum we choose, it could also be activities you are committed to. Take the time to really flesh out what is good and what is not so good in your homeschool. The answers to these questions will help you to figure out the next step.

Oftentimes, this review of the previous year is actually showing me why particular things didn’t work – and it often comes back to the structure of our year. I feel like I have a good track record after 15 years of homeschooling on picking curriculum, but how to manage all of the resources always takes a new eye, and new ideas, each year.

Purchasing Curriculum & Resources

At this point in homeschool planning you have figured out which resources you may need for your new year. Obviously you want to shop your shelves first, but there are often new resources that you need, and now is the time to look for them.

Be aware that new resources could be on backorder. This has happened a lot to me since 2020. More and more people are homeschooling, and because of that, the resources sell out sooner than curriculum companies were expecting. That means waiting, which isn’t ideal, but happens nonetheless.

If you are running into backorders, see if the curriculum company will send you samples. Sonlight, the base curriculum we have used since 2010, offers the first 3 weeks of all of their levels as free samples, so even if things are backordered you can still start your planning. I know that other curriculum companies, like Teaching Textbooks offer a number of lessons for free, which then automatically roll into your purchased program for the year. Even if you don’t see free samples, but have purchased the resources, reach out to the curriculum company itself. You may be able to work a deal for digital samples to be sent so you can start planning.

How to Plan Your Homeschool Year: Organization

Once you have all of your curriculum and resources in hand, the next step is to organize them. This is going to be personal for every individual family. What works for me may not work for you, and that is totally OK! You may have a lot of space, or very little space.

We have a lot of books in our home, and we haven’t always had the shelves to hold all of those books. So, of a very long time, I would keep things boxed up in my attic. It wasn’t ideal, especially as we got more and more books. But, it was all we could do. If I thought I would need to reference the books, they went in a box under the bed for easier access.

Another great way to organize curriculum, and this is what I do now even with all of the space we have, is to use milk crates to organize everything. Because we use so many books, I have to update our milk crates just about every 6-12 weeks. But, if you don’t use as many books, you probably wouldn’t have to update as frequently.

Structuring Your Homeschool Year

After you have researched and purchased all of the curriculum, and then you have also organized it, the next step in how to plan your homeschool year is the actual structure of your homeschool year. This is where it can get a bit challenging. Many of your resources will likely have lesson plans, but how do you manage those plans?

If you are new to homeschooling, it will be a lot of trial and error. Even if you have been homeschooling a long time, it still may take some time to settle in to a new rhythm with the new resources.

I recommend first choosing a start date. Look at your year as a whole, mark off when you will have days off or vacation, and get a good understanding of when you will be homeschooling. There are so many ways to set up your homeschool year, and I have tried a lot of them. If you need more help, please sign up for a coaching session and we can walk through your resources and figure out the best path for your family.

Make sure you understand your state’s homeschool requirements, and account for that in your plan as well.

I prefer to plan out all of the resources we are going to use for the year, familiarize myself with those resources, get a general outline of my year laid out, and then focus on weekly homeschool planning. It seems to work the best for me, gives me a good amount of flexibility, and I can adjust things as needed. But, if you want to plan out each term at once, or even your entire year, that is completely up to you!

The Bottom Line

When you consider how to plan your homeschool year, it can be a daunting task. But, instead of looking at it with drudgery, look at it with excitement. Not only will you be teaching your kids, but you have the unique opportunity to learn right alongside them. This is one of the main reasons that I homeschool, I love learning with my kids.

As you consider different resources, keep that in mind. What are the things you are excited about? Those are the things you should be including in your homeschool days. And if your kids are really excited about something, that should also be at the forefront of your mind as you consider a new homeschool year.

Again, if you want more help and encouragement, I would love for you to come check out my membership community!