A General Outline of Your Homeschool Timeline Can Save Time and Frustration

Homeschool timeline? Huh? Right about now you are probably thinking - well didn't I just read about homeschool scheduling? Aren't these two the same thing? Well, if you like you can see it that way - but give me a minute to explain why I separate them out into two different categories.

A homeschool schedule gives you a general outline of the short term, like today, this week, or this month. You plan your short term goals this way and you try to include what chapters or units you want to get done in a time span of a week or so.

A homeschool timeline is a much more long term concept. For example, a parent who is just thinking about homeschooling would have a timeline like this:

1. This semester I will realize which methods will work best for us,
2. Next semester I will evaluate curriculum and decide on my top choices
3. Next summer I will fill out all the legal forms and send them in

This fall we will:

1. Introduce phonics
2. Concentrate on better handwriting
3. Learn about life cycles, and
4. Take more frequent field trips

1. Take a educational vacation to Yellowstone Park
2. Learn to blend sounds in reading, and
3. Start basic addition and subtraction

So your timeline is the big picture look at your year. I like timelines and I especially like to make long term goals. They are much less stressful than short term goals, that's for sure!

If you are brand new to homeschool your year will become overwhelming and difficult very quickly if you only make short term goals. A well planned homeschool timeline, using long term goals, will save you a lot of hair pulling time, especially in the late spring when you have to submit evaluations and/or testing.

Some states allow professional evaluations instead of testing, and this is where timelines can really save you stress. By having the goals set ahead of time it will be very easy for an evaluator to check off the things you did on your timeline and decide if your child is making progress.

Now that that is clear - what kind of timeline do you need? Use the checklists below as a general template to follow when setting goals, remember to be flexible because timelines, like schedules, can become obsolete real fast if you are too rigid in your expectations.

Little Moe might need more time with handwriting than you expected and the reason you decided to homeschool in the first place was to give him an individualized learning plan and let him go at his own pace.

Leave Homeschool Timeline and go to Homeschool Checklists