Minimalist Homeschooling: Simple Homeschool Lesson Planning

We’ve been talking about minimalist homeschooling for the past few days and, so far, we’ve covered making changes in the way we store books, use paper, make crafts, and manage digital resources.

Today, though, we’re on to the granddaddy of them all: LESSON PLANNING.

Lesson planning is both my favorite and my most-hated part of homeschooling. I love the idea of doing it and I generally love doing it…for the first few weeks of the school year. Then I start to do it a little less and less. By week eight or so, I’m hiding the lesson planning book somewhere in the room so I don’t have to look at it…lol.

So I know it’s time to make a change in the way I plan our homeschool. And that’s why I’m giving simple homeschool lesson planning a shot this year!

How to Simplify Homeschool Lesson Planning

As I’ve mentioned many, many times before, I’m living with ADD. Which means that I tend to hoard and overcommit myself frequently. Nowhere does this tendency show up more in homeschooling for me than in how I plan our lessons.

I tend to overschedule our days, include too many activities, and then do almost none of them. So that’s pretty obviously not the ideal way to homeschool.

This year, I’m keeping it simple with the following format:

• Our basic school subjects
• One craft per week
• One video per week
• A field trip every month

As for choosing our craft each week, I’m going to use up the craft resources I already have (see: Cutting Down on Craft Supplies) and once those are gone, I’m sticking with resources from the library from here on.

When it comes to choosing a video, I’m going to use the videos I already have listed in some of our homeschool unit studies. I think there are enough there to keep us going for some time. 🙂

I’m also going to make use of a digital planning program, such as Evernote. I just don’t have the time to write things down by hand anymore. If I can’t see it on my phone during the day, it’s probably not going to get done. (I still love the paper planners! In fact, I use one for my overall day, but I’ve got to let them go for homeschooling. Sad, but true.)

How will we tackle our basic school subjects this year? We’ll be talking about that tomorrow!

This post is part of the How to Homeschool as a Minimalist series! Stop by tomorrow for Day 7: Stick to the Basics!

Get more ideas for planning your homeschooling year on my Homeschool Planning Pinterest board!