January Homeschool Check-In: Planning for Success in 2025

The holiday decorations are all packed away, and it’s time to dust off our January homeschool routine! Like many homeschooling families, we take a nice long break over Christmas. Now, with 2025 stretching ahead of us, I’m excited to share my plans for getting back into the swing of things.

I know every homeschool family has their own unique approach to planning. Some prefer to plan month by month, while others map out their whole year in detail. Some families follow the traditional school calendar, and others create their own schedule entirely. There’s no one right way to do it! But I’ve found that seeing how other families handle their planning can give us new ideas and insights for our own homeschools.

So grab a cup of tea and join me as I walk you through my planning process for the new year. I’ll share what’s working, what we’re changing, and how we’re organizing everything from core subjects to extracurriculars.

My Planning Rhythm

Like most aspects of homeschooling, I’ve developed my planning routine through trial and error over the years. Here’s what works for us: I do one big planning session in August, a mid-year review at Christmas, and quick weekly check-ins throughout the year. I find the holiday break is a great time to look back at my plans for the year and make any adjustments to our January homeschool plan.

August is when I do my deep planning work. I clear out all of last year’s books from our dining room shelves (a satisfying but sometimes overwhelming task!), decide what we want to accomplish in the coming year, and place our curriculum orders. This is when I map out our general schedule – what units we’ll cover before Christmas and what we’ll tackle after the break.

Our school year runs from September through May, with some flexibility at the start and end. We typically complete about 35 weeks of formal learning each year – roughly 15 weeks before Christmas and 20 weeks after. To keep everyone fresh and motivated, we take strategic breaks: two weeks at Christmas, plus one week each in November, February, and either March or April.

Between these bigger planning sessions, I spend about half an hour each week planning for the coming days or new units. It’s a simple routine that keeps us on track without becoming overwhelming. And here’s some exciting news: when my Homeschool Teacher Training membership launches later this year, we’ll be hosting regular Sunday evening homeschool planning co-working sessions on Zoom. I can’t wait to plan alongside other homeschool parents and share ideas!

This rhythm of big-picture planning mixed with regular quick check-ins helps me stay organized without getting lost in the details. It gives us enough structure to keep moving forward while maintaining the flexibility that makes homeschooling so wonderful. These planning strategies are some of my favorite tips for homeschoolers who want to stay organized without getting overwhelmed.

Core Subjects

If you’re familiar with my Super Simple Homeschool Planner, you’ll recognize the structure I’m using to organize this post. We’ll walk through our six core curriculum subjects first, then look at extracurriculars, my own professional development goals, and finally the nitty-gritty logistics of how I juggle it all. (And yes, I do mean juggle – some days more gracefully than others!). Let’s look at my January homeschool plan subject by subject.

Math

Math is one of our most consistent and well-established subjects. We use Math Mammoth, which I absolutely love – I think it’s the perfect homeschool math curriculum. (Though I should mention there are several other great programs out there too!)

A few years ago, I bought the digital bundle, which has turned out to be a fantastic investment. Instead of using complete textbooks, I print chapters a few at a time and keep them in binders. This system was especially helpful when my youngest would get overwhelmed by seeing a whole book at once. I could just pull out one or two pages at a time, which made the work feel much more manageable.

These days, both kids are pretty independent with their math. They know to grab their binders during math time and complete two or three pages (usually a full lesson, unless it’s particularly long). They’re allowed to do half the questions in each section if there are more than two similar problems – a flexibility that keeps them moving forward without getting bogged down in repetition.

For my January planning, I need to print the next few chapters for each child. I planned out their chapter sequence back in August, but we don’t always do every chapter. I typically skip or minimize the sections on money, time, and measurement, teaching these concepts through daily life instead. This approach lets us focus on core concepts without the pressure to “finish the book” by year’s end.

As part of our homeschool start this year, one big change I’m implementing is printing out the answer keys. Until now, the kids would hand in their work for me to check. While this worked fine in the earlier grades when I could check answers mentally, my son’s seventh-grade math requires more careful verification. I’m creating separate answer key folders so they can check their own work – something they actually prefer, as they’d rather find their own mistakes than have me point them out! I’ll still mark chapter tests for my son (we don’t start testing until middle school).

I don’t stress too much about whether they complete an entire book in a year or stay strictly at “grade level.” However, I do keep a rough idea of where I expect us to be by year’s end. If we’re significantly off track by Christmas, I know it’s time to investigate: Are we skipping too many math days? Do they need extra support or practice in certain areas? This year, though, we’re right where we should be.

Grammar & Language

We’ve adopted a more relaxed but consistent approach to language this year. Each morning, we work through Rex Barks together, supplemented with materials from English Grammar Revolution. I’m a huge fan of teaching grammar through sentence diagramming! While I know some find it unnecessary, it’s the approach that makes the most sense to me.

Our morning language routine is simple but effective (one of my top tips for homeschoolers is to keep it simple!). We open the book, read the next section together, and take turns doing exercises on the whiteboard. Afterwards, the kids practice either cursive handwriting (using some great historical quote worksheets from Teachers Pay Teachers) or typing.

We’re also casually working through “Getting Started With Latin” – just a lesson every day or so. We started in September and we’re on lesson 28; at this rate, it might take us three years to finish the book, but that’s perfectly fine! While Latin isn’t essential for everyone, it’s proving to be a great choice for us. The kids chose it over French, and now they’re constantly spotting Latin roots in English words.

This routine is new for us this year, replacing our previous work with Logic of English Foundations and Well-Ordered Language. While I loved WOL, the kids were getting a bit bored, and it felt too intensive. Our current approach is working well, so I’m not planning any major changes after Christmas. I had considered adding some spelling practice, but I think we’ll save that for next year. My only task is to stock up on more of those historical quote handwriting pages – this might be our last year of formal handwriting practice, so we’ll make it count!

Literature

December saw our reading routine slip a bit – we started a book that didn’t grab us and ended up reading mostly Christmas stories instead. For January, I’m looking for a quick win: something short, engaging, and fun that we’ll all enjoy. We might revisit an old favorite like “Dominic” to get back into our groove. We have one big, ambitious read on our list this year – “The Count of Monte Cristo” – so I think a couple shorter, simpler selections will get us ready to sink into something deep later in the winter.

I tried something new this year by assigning independent reading to each kid in addition to our read-aloud, but it didn’t quite take off. I think it was mostly a problem of figuring out exactly when the independent reading is going to happen during the day. I need to decide whether to give the independent reading another try or let it go for now.

Writing

Writing is getting the biggest overhaul this semester. It’s always been a challenging subject for me to teach, partly due to my own school experiences with writing. Last semester, I enrolled both kids in separate IEW writing classes on Outschool, which had both pros and cons.

The positives were significant: they finally had a systematic weekly writing practice, and one teacher was particularly excellent – encouraging, thorough, and great at giving feedback. The experience taught them valuable skills in managing homework, following instructions, and receiving feedback. The IEW checklist system helped them understand exactly what was expected.

However, there were downsides: one teacher’s style didn’t suit us, and the class schedules were challenging. The late afternoon timing and long sessions were tough on everyone.

By October, both kids were asking me to teach writing instead. After watching how the program was taught, I feel more confident about taking it on myself. We made a deal: we’ll continue where they left off in their IEW books, but if the quality drops or we start slacking, they’ll return to classes next year with different teachers and better schedules. I’m still deciding whether to get the teaching videos or work straight from the books, but we’ll adjust as needed.

History

History is staying steady this semester. Both kids are continuing their live classes with Mr. Powell at Knowable World (a company I co-founded with him – but that’s a story for another time!). They’ve been taking classes with him since second grade, and it’s working beautifully for us.

We did make one significant change this year that’s really paying off: instead of saving our class note review for test weeks, we now have a dedicated Thursday review session. After classes end on Wednesday, we print out the weekly notes and go through them together. This new approach is working much better than our old system of cramming before tests.

The weekly reviews help us catch any confusion early. If the kids don’t understand something, they can ask questions right away or I can find answers for them before we move too far ahead. It’s made test weeks much less stressful – no more last-minute scrambles to understand weeks’ worth of material! This is definitely one change we’ll keep going through 2025.

Science

I’ll be honest – science has fallen to the bottom of my priority list this year. We’ve completed all of Mystery Science in past years (most of it twice, actually, since I did it first with my son and then again with my daughter), and I haven’t found anything else I love quite as much.

My son has been working through Khan Academy’s middle school science courses, which is giving him good exposure to different topics. For my daughter (grade 4 this year), I started the year with some Evan Moor workbooks, but she found them a bit dry. Eventually, science time morphed into extra writing practice time, and formal science studies slipped off our radar in the months before Christmas.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been any science learning happening! Outside of school time we’ve been working through this Body Talk Basics course, which includes lots of biology. And after our summer Jurassic Park movie marathon, she developed quite an interest in dinosaurs and read tons of books about them. You could say we’ve been “unschooling” science this year.

Looking ahead to 2025, my first priority is getting our new writing routine solid. Once that’s established, I plan to return to using the workbooks as a framework for exploring different science topics. If you have any curriculum you love for grade 5 or 8, let me know and I’ll try it out for next year!

Extracurriculars

We’ve got a pretty full schedule of activities this year, especially for my daughter. She’s at CanSkate one evening a week, plus she often goes skating during the free lunch hour sessions at our town arena. Add to that swimming lessons AND Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and she’s keeping active! Fortunately, everything is just a five-minute drive from home – much better than last fall’s hour-long drives to the city for soccer and First LEGO Challenge club.

My son is taking a more laid-back approach right now. He’s undecided about joining LEGO club again in the spring, and he’s happy not having any scheduled activities at the moment. We’ll see if that changes as the year goes on.

Both kids stay plenty busy with their personal interests and regular meetups with friends and cousins, both in person and online. It’s nice to see them finding their own balance between structured activities and free time.

Professional Development

One of my favorite tips for homeschoolers is to keep learning yourself – that’s why I’m excited about building Homeschool Teacher Training in 2025! This month, I’m diving into a blog series about “The Seven Laws of Teaching” – it’s an old book with some surprisingly relevant advice for today’s homeschool parents. We’ll be exploring how each “law” applies to teaching our kids at home.

I’m also working to finish my MEd degree this year – a major goal that involves a lot of work on my thesis project. I’m excited about what I’ll learn through the process, and I’m even more excited about completing it! And if you’re wondering whether you should try juggling graduate school, two businesses, and homeschooling all at once… well, give me a call because we might be kindred spirits! But I’ll warn you – it’s definitely intense. I was able to substitute teach a few days each month last semester, but I might need to put that on hold this winter.

Logistics

The logistics of our homeschool life are pretty well-oiled at this point. We do our formal learning from 10 AM to 3 PM Monday through Thursday (with an hour for lunch), plus an hour or two on Fridays. I work before our homeschool starts, in the evenings, and on weekends. My husband, who works from home, handles most of the extracurricular shuttling. Having him around, plus the fact that the kids are now 9 and 12 and pretty self-sufficient, means our days usually run smoothly.

I’m hoping this is my last semester of being a student myself – if all goes well, I’ll finish my thesis paper over the summer. Even though life is busy right now, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Wrapping up my January homeschool planning

That’s my ‘plan for success’ for 2025! I hope these January homeschool insights and tips for homeschoolers have given you some ideas for your own journey. Whether you’re planning your homeschool start for the new year or just looking to refresh your routine, remember that every family’s approach is different.

I’d love to hear what you’re planning for the new year! Drop me an email and let me know what you’re excited about or what changes you’re making in your homeschool this year.