It’s that time of year, when my social media feed is full of homeschooling families planning their academic years, with curricula, planners, schedules, lesson plans and more.
As Unschoolers, we don’t really do that. We’re fortunate to be in a place and situation where we do not need to provide a homeschooling plan, or progress tracking.
But planning is still a part of our homeschool, especially looking at the academic year ahead.
So, here’s what we do:
- Define our “Why”. This is a simple but, oh so significant task, that I was introduced to through a coaching session with Robyn Robertson of Honey I’m Homeschooling The Kids. Thinking about why we are doing this, why we are homeschooling, why we are unschooling, helps gives us a center to move out from, and a goal to work to. Everything we then contemplate doing can be then considered in this framework. Does something help us achieve our “why”? If not, why would we do it? Our why is slowly changing as our children grow and we settle further into this life we have chosen. I ponder on our “why” and discuss it with the family, particularly my husband.
- Discuss with the kids, independently and together, what do we want to do, both over the year and the next few months. This can include specific goals and current general interests, both in and outside our home: classes to try out and travel to do, specific activities like “read” a certain series for our read-aloud, and directions to travel in our learning “I want to know about X”. I can offer up new things to try or explore and see if there is interest. This can also include things that are for me, either to do with the kids or independently: last year one of my goals was the complete my yoga teacher training whilst homeschooling through a pandemic, without making any of all of us miserable!
- Research what achieving those goals will look like. Do classes, group activities or travel need booking? What will we need to do those? Are there resources on a subject of interest I could offer up – books, movies, online learning portals? Do we need to schedule something in our weekly rhythm, e.g. have a set “game night” to facilitate playing more board games or have something regular in my husband’s calendar so that the science he and the big kid want to do together doesn’t get pushed back.
- Consider if our learning space(s) can best accommodate those goals. This can be small things, like the paper storage I have ordered so that craft supplies can be in view without being a mess, to facilitate more art projects that one kid wants to do, or bigger things like creating a private study space for a kid that wants to do online classes, or working on our RV to make it more comfortable for hanging out in, to accommodate both family members who want to spend more time skiing and those who don’t.
- Book the things and order the supplies. And that makes my August urge to prep for back-to-school from all my, and our, years of schooling, as well as my uber-planner mentality that sometimes butts up against unschooling still.
So that’s how we plan.
And then we re-evaluate, as things change (we’ve had all too much of that the last 18 months!) and as time passes. I’ve found that I naturally re-evaluate with the kids around Christmas, looking towards the winter/spring term and the height of our ski season, and then again in spring, looking towards the summer.
I also then “back-plan” to provide a record for myself and to get into the habit of tracking enough to later make a transcript if needed, but more on that another time.
