Top 5 Tips for Homeschool Planning

Written By: The Good and the Beautiful Published On:

Summer is the perfect time to plan ahead! In this blog post and short video, Jenny Phillips shares her top five tips for simple, yet effective planning for the next school year.

Top 5 Tips for Planning over the Summer

Some families homeschool all year round, and others take a lighter load during the summer, like I do, while some take summer completely off. But regardless of how you homeschool, summer homeschooling almost always tends to be more laid-back and is such a wonderful time to do a little planning and organization for the next school year. I want to share my top five tips to help your summer be a time of simple but effective planning for the next school year!

Writing in planner | The Good and The Beautiful

1. Don’t Procrastinate

My first tip is to not procrastinate planning and organizing. Summer has a way of SUDDENLY being over. It can cause stress when we have to rush to get things in place for homeschool to start. It can also cause stress to have in the back of your mind all summer the need to order curriculum and plan and organize. In addition, planning ahead allows you to get all of your curriculum and not risk any forgotten items arriving after you need to get started.

2. Prep Curriculum

Buy printed curriculum or print it all out during the summer. Trying to print out sections at a time during the school year causes extra work and continual preparation and forethinking during the school year. Often, you forget to have things printed and ready, and it’s hard then to rein your kids back in once you’ve gotten everything printed. When everything is printed and ready before school starts, it can make things more smooth and easy.

stack of books | The Good and The Beautiful

3. Gather Books to Read

Gather as many reading books as you can. Keeping kids occupied with good books to read during the school year makes it much more likely that a lot of good reading will actually happen. Summer is a great time to stock up on books. Check out The Good and Beautiful Book List where we continually add new, clean, reviewed books to a searchable list. You can purchase books new or used on websites such as abebooks.com or Amazon. And/or you can find out what books your library has, and make a list to use during the school year.

  • The Good and the Beautiful Book List — A free searchable, downloadable list of book recommendations.

    Go to The Good and Beautiful Book List for a free searchable list of more than 1,000 books for children preschool through high school.

  • The Good and the Beautiful Bookshop

    Shop at The Good and the Beautiful Bookshop to purchase parent approved books that are uplifting and character building.

4. Intentionally Plan

Make some time to sit in a nice cozy place and pray and ponder over your school year, and plan for next year. Writing out an intentional plan, and then being flexible with it when needed, can really help things go smoothly and will help you be more consistent. There are many different ways to create a schedule. For videos on organizing schedules, see our playlist here.

For helpful videos and blog posts on homeschool planning, scheduling, and more, visit our How to Start Homeschooling page.

  • How to Start Homeschooling | The Good and The Beautiful
Start Homeschooling
Organized Bookshelf | The Good and The Beautiful

5. Declutter and Organize

Use the summer to declutter and organize your homeschool shelves and bins. If you are overwhelmed, make easy goals, such as doing one bin or shelf each day.

Bonus Tip!

If you have a desire to improve your teaching and parenting skills, you could do some teacher training over the summer, when you have more free time, by watching videos on The Good and the Beautiful main YouTube channel or other homeschool channels that you trust. See our Homeschool Help playlist. These videos can arm you with knowledge and encouragement that we hope will help your next school year be the best one yet!

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26 comments

Brittney Ray

Summer is over and I’m PROCRASTINATING!!!! Ahhhh!!! These tips are so helpful!

Morgan Glass

This is our first year homeschooling our 2nd grader. We decided on using the Good and the Beautiful curriculum which has been amazing so far. My husband is teaching our son math & science while I’m teaching language arts, writing, & reading. It has been going so well so far and we’re enjoying homeschooling more than we could have ever imagined. Can’t wait to see how much our little one learns this year!

Bree Smitley

I definitely agree with having everything printed out ahead of time! This is all so helpful, especially for new and upcoming homeschooling parents!

Victoria Smalley

Love this. This is our second year homeschooling and reading all of these blogs and tips over the past year have definitely made this year less stressful!

Suelene Gracia

I’m new to this. I started back in December 2024, with 0 knowledge in homeschooling. Never crossed my mind, but things happened in middle school, and I knew inmediately that I had to take my boy out. I asked google and lead me to TGTB. It looked colorful, simple and fun. Planning has been painful, since I have NO IDEA what I’m doing, but these books are pretty easy to follow. Hoping to get my hands in everything TGTB has to offer 🤗

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