Mapping Out and Planning Our Homeschool Year for 2024-2025
Welcome back to Making Everyday Magic! I’m Shanna, and if you’re new here, we are a homeschooling family of four. We’re heading into our eighth year of homeschooling, and today, I’m excited to share our plans for the 2024-2025 school year for our upcoming seventh and third graders. Let’s dive into the details of how we map out our homeschool year.
Hurricane Story Time
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of planning, I want to share a quick story about our recent experience with Hurricane Beryl. It hit our area hard, causing significant damage in our neighborhood. Fortunately, we didn’t sustain severe damage, but we did lose power for four and a half days and internet for an additional hours after the power was restored. It was a challenging week, but we’re grateful for the support from friends and family.
Now that we’re back on track, I’m thrilled to finally get started on planning our homeschool year. Let’s get into it!
Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to be an insider and to follow along with our days over on Instagram @makingeverydaymagic.
Planning Our Homeschool Year
Setting Up the Year
For the 2024-2025 school year, we’re starting our lessons in the first week of August, which includes the last couple of days of July. We aim for a minimum of 30 weeks of hard schoolwork, supplemented with a couple of lighter weeks. Here’s how we break it down:
- Fall Semester: 18 weeks
- Spring Semester: 18 weeks
- Planned Vacations: We allocate a week off for vacations both in the fall and spring.
Our goal is to finish early December and early May to allow for flexibility around holiday events and potential recitals.
Free Planning Templates Can Be Found HERE
Lesson Planning
You can find everything that we are using this year linked right HERE
I’ve gone through our curriculum to figure out the total number of lessons for each subject. Here’s an example of how I plan:
- Math: 30 lessons (allocate 34 weeks to include tests and exams)
- Middle School Chemistry: 42 lessons (will need to double up some weeks)
- World History Detective: 75 lessons (require more frequent lessons or extended study periods)
To make this manageable, I divide the total number of lessons by the number of weeks we plan to school. This helps us determine how many pages or lessons to cover each week.
Mom & Me Mondays
One of our favorite traditions is “Mom & Me Mondays.” On these days, we focus on:
- Math Lessons: We’ll watch these together to kickstart the week.
- Texas History and Chemistry: Chemistry will initially be twice a week.
- Art History: More flexible, often at their leisure.
- HiGasfy and Dinos 101: Scheduled activities to keep Mondays engaging.
This year, we’re trying a new approach for our older child’s curriculum, which I’ll explain in my seventh-grade planning post.
Flexibility and Adjustments
Homeschooling offers the flexibility to adjust as needed. We plan vacations and breaks but remain open to changes. Our goal is to create a balanced and enriching year for both our children.
Conclusion
That’s our plan for the 2024-2025 homeschool year! We’re excited to dive into our eighth year of homeschooling with a structured yet flexible schedule. Stay tuned for detailed posts on our seventh-grade and third-grade schedules, as well as our setup process.
Thank you for joining me today. Your support means the world to us, especially after such a challenging week. I hope you found this post helpful. If you did, please consider subscribing to our monthly newsletter to be an insider and to follow along with our days over on Instagram @makingeverydaymagic.
Here’s to a fantastic homeschooling year ahead!
