Homeschool Term Planning | Habits of a Charlotte Mason Homeschool

The longer I homeschool and the more children I add to formal lessons, the more I realize the need for proper planning if I want to spread the feast when offering my children a Charlotte Mason Education. I’ve also realized the importance of being prepared for our lessons. How will my children take their studies seriously if I don’t take preparing for them seriously?

In today’s blog post I’m going to share some things I’ve changed in my homeschool planning routine to plan for this term’s lessons. I plan our entire homeschool year by term, so it makes sense that once I have an overview of our homeschool year, I break down each term’s lessons. I also plan weekly, which I’ll touch on in this post, but will get into more in another blog post. Let’s dive into homeschool term planning in a Charlotte Mason homeschool.

Creating Habits

“We are not unwilling to make efforts in the beginning with the assurance that by-and-by things will go smoothly; and this is just what habit is, in an extraordinary degree, pledged to effect. The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.”

Charlotte Mason, Home Education

I cannot stress the importance of instilling habits not only in your children, but yourself in order to have a successful homeschool experience. I have honestly struggled with habits over the years as I’ve gone through pregnancies and moves. It has been entirely too easy to fly by the seat of my pants and try to open and go each day. In turn, I’m left frazzled.

I’ve also seen what habits when my children lack habits. They forget to brush their teeth and hair, they don’t do their chores, they balk at doing their schoolwork, and homeschool is just generally much more difficult.

I noticed my middle children in particular really lacked several good habits, so I decided this term it was time to change that!

Routine Charts

The first thing I did was to print very simple routine charts for each of my four younger children. I was getting so tired of reminding them to brush their teeth and get dressed. They are very motivated by checklists and the checklists give them easy directions for what to do and when.

These checklists have been revolutionary in making sure they get themselves ready before we begin morning time. They also come in handy in the evening before bed.

Independent Work Checklists

In keeping with the motivating checklists, I created each of the younger children simple independent work checklists. I made them in Canva and allowed them to personalize their checklists with graphics they like.

These checklists are very simple, including only independent work for the younger kids such as math, language arts, and handwriting. I personalized them based off of their particular curricula. Each of these subjects are easy to do without detail because the kids know they simply do the next lesson.

My older children have much more detailed checklists. My 10th grader and 8th graders use a Google doc that allows me to share links with them so they can read articles or watch videos that go along with their studies. My 6th grader uses a simple spiral notebook that I fill in each week.

Grab our Free Homeschool Planning Printables!

You’ll get an up-to-date calendar at a glance, expense tracker, and attendance tracker!

Send them to me!

We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.

Built with Kit

Keeping a Master Binder and a Term Binder

I’ve shared in the past all about my Homeschool Record binder. I keep all of my plans for the year in there, as well all of the syllabi for all of my kids.

I decided this term to make a “Morning Time” binder, but in reality it’s a term binder. It houses all of our morning time information, as well as the syllabi for each child for that particular term. I also keep a weekly page in the front of the binder as a checklist for all of the mother-guided work for my younger kids.

Morning Time

Morning Time is a very important time in our homeschool because the entire family comes together to learn. We do the “riches” together at this time, we pray, we read poetry, we answer Civics questions, and catch up on current events.

I read Cindy Rollins Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love and decided to implement some of her suggestions. I really love the anthology in the back of the book so we are keeping up with our memory work and learning all sorts of important Civics questions.

Incorporating the riches (hymns, folk songs, artist study, composer study, and more) is easy and free with Ambleside Online’s rotation. We are also using their Nature Study rotation this term.

For current affairs we watch The World from A to Z with Carl Azuz for free on YouTube. I think it’s my kids’ favorite part of morning time.

Family Work or Mother Guided Work

In my YouTube video that you can watch here, I talk about “Family Work,” but in reality it is Mother Guided work. These are the subjects that include me reading aloud to the children and then they narrate back to me either orally, or they record a drawing a written narration in their Schoolnest notebooks.

These subjects are only done with my younger set of kids who are in 4th grade, 3rd grade, and 1st grade. Since we follow Mater Amabilis curriculum these students are in Level 1A and Level 1B.

For these students we do religion, both national and ancient history, literature, geography, earth studies, and science together. I spread these throughout the week with short lessons of 20 minutes or less.

The Need for a Schedule vs. a Routine

For most of my homeschool career I have operated on a routine. We always had a baby, toddler, or both in our homeschool and a detailed schedule was impossible. Now that my children are older and we have places to be at certain times on certain days, a schedule is necessary or things just don’t get done.

I made a detailed, timed schedule, laminated it, and posted it in our dining room so the kids know exactly what we are doing and when. It motivates all of us to get the subjects done on time, and it reminds me to stay on track.

Most people who follow Charlotte Mason create a timetable. My schedule is not in a table format and our school day lengths are often varied.

Tying It All Together

As a large family homeschool mama, I have a lot of balls in the air and a lot that I need to manage. I use a variety of checklists for my children depending on age.

I keep all of their curriculum syllabi in my main homeschool record binder, and then I keep current information based on term in my Morning Time binder. I use a posted schedule to keep track of what subjects we are doing when with my youngest kids, while my older children are in charge of managing their own time.

This post is part of my series, Balancing Homemaking and Homeschooling. Check out that video here!