As the homeschooling year draws to a close for some families, it's a good time to evaluate how the year went and to plan for the year ahead. You might be like us -- we often started the year with more plans than we could work into 9 months.

We have high expectations for the school year and might feel letdown if we don't accomplish everything we had planned. Don't fret about those things not accomplished! Just make note of them and work them into next year's plans, or try slipping some of them in during the summer.

Summer catch-up
If you didn't get around to the study of the solar system in Science, for instance, go ahead and celebrate the end of the year and enjoy your graduation ceremonies. A few weeks later, as summer boredom sets in, visit the library and choose some nicely illustrated and informative books on the solar system, and see if your child would be interested in reading them. Or rent a video from your library on the sun and solar system, pop some popcorn, and sit down with your children to watch and discuss the video.

Encourage your children to make a mobile of the sun and the planets. They can invite their friends over to take part in the fun. Let them work on the project on the back porch or on a table where they'll have plenty of room to spread out their materials.

If you had planned to read a book, such as The Boxcar Children, The Hobbit, or Island of the Blue Dolphins, etc., but didn't get to it, read it together this summer. Pick up some Literature Notes or Literature Guides that provide activities and project ideas for the book, and have fun doing the activities together.

Don't mention that you had planned these topics for your home-school year. Simply allow these activities to be a fun way to spend a few days of summer!

Planning for next year
Whether you use a packaged curriculum, or parts of several curriculums, or create your own, you probably follow an outline suggesting the topics to be studied for the grade level your child is going into. In our area, we had to keep a portfolio of the child's worksheets, workbooks, writings, and creative projects. The portfolio had to be available for the superintendent's inspection with a 15-day written notice. (Our portfolio was only reviewed at the end of the school year, and we were given at least 30 days notice.) We also had to keep a log of the reading materials used in conjunction with the instruction taking place.

We chose to keep a weekly log of the lessons we covered, along with the reading material used. The worksheets and learning activities coincided with the lesson plan log and with the reading materials sheet, so that there would be no misunderstanding of what was occurring in our homeschool environment. Within a few weeks, my son was able to keep the log himself by writing in the lessons that were done each day.

This weekly lesson log made it easier for me to do my planning for the year, too. Armed with the typical course of study outline for his upcoming grade level and the past year's log book, I was able to chart out our plans for the upcoming year fairly easily.

Charting the year
First, I made notes of whatever we did not accomplish by the end of our homeschool year, so we could work them into next year's. I also made notes of areas that needed extra attention. This might be multiplication, story problems, reading aloud, writing essays, etc. I would want to take these into account when planning lessons for next year's subject areas.

I went on to list the subjects we would be studying on a sheet of paper, such as U.S. History, and below that, I listed the topics that we would need to explore, i.e., the discovery of America, the colonization of America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, the Constitution, etc. These topics can easily be found on the contents page of the textbook.

After completing similar lists for each of the subjects to be covered -- history, math, science, English, etc. -- I visited the library and searched for the books that looked interesting and informative. I made note of these books so I could easily locate them as the new school year drew closer.

Often I would do one list at a time, such as the Science list, then visit the library that week and try to focus on science topics only. The next week, I would work on the Math list, then visit the library again.

Getting ideas
I also visited the local school supply stores during the summer months to see what types of supplementary materials they offered for the subjects we would be studying. And I browsed the new and used book stores in our area, picking up on any bargains I found that I knew would be helpful. From these visits, I was able to pick up many ideas by simply browsing the shelves. I would go home and write down those ideas while they were still fresh in my mind.

One example is a timeline I saw in a school supply store. Rather than purchasing the timeline, I felt it would be more fun and more educational to create our own as we went along through the new school year. (It turned out to be a great project!)

Ready for the new year!
By June, I usually had a good idea of the educational materials I would need to purchase for the upcoming school year, and I began marking up the homeschool supply catalogs I had on file in our file cabinets. I placed my orders and by the beginning of August, most of our materials had arrived.