A goal without a plan is just a wish...

how creating your own homeschool learning plan can make life a lot easier

There are so many areas in my life where I attempt to do something and then feel disappointed in the result.

We're committed DIY (do-it-yourself) people. My husband prefers to just start building, making or creating, having a picture in his head of what he wants to achieve collecting what he needs along the way as he needs it. We generally chat about it first, but our communication styles are different, and sometimes I can’t ‘see’ the picture in his head, and he can’t explain it using words, and he finds it hard to draw it too.

Helping and watching him frustrate me enormously: he frequently needs to stop work because he doesn't have the appropriate materials on hand, and because that frustrates him he often takes short cuts, which means he needs to rejig the original plan and what we end up with isn't exactly what we wanted.

There's not a plan in sight. Or a list of materials needed. Or a budget. It's all made up as we go along. Looking back it's amazing what we've accomplished. Walking around in the beautiful house, around this amazing garden... it's all wow! Ask anyone that visits.

But what they don't see is the confusion, the arguments, the heartache, the disappointment, the many times the marriage has almost dissolved, the gradual loss of joy in doing what we love, which is being DIY people.

We were obliged however, to draw up a building plan for the two houses that we’ve constructed. It needed a list of building materials and specifications. This was needed to get council approval.

And I'm glad we did because both houses are sound and safe and that's important! But we also changed minor things as we built, adapting the plan to suit our growing understanding about our needs and what we want in a dwelling.

I know I would be much happier in our continuing DIY lifestyle if we drew up more plans on paper that would help guide us, track our thoughts and the changes we make along the way for all the projects we take on in life. It would assist me in feeling confident and optimistic, bring more enjoyment and satisfaction while doing the work.

Why am I writing about this? Because I see a parallel with home education.

So many parents I have spoken to over the years express feeling lost or confused, not sure where they are heading or what resources to use, or what they want and need for their children educationally.

Over time they settle into what works for them and their children, but getting there is fraught with self-doubt, confusion and, in many cases, considerable expense on materials that are underused.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In 1995, after a decade of home education and half a dozen years of helping others begin this incredible learning journey, I started to write my first book Getting Started with Homeschooling. This on the page the approach I took, which I believe helped to build my extraordinary confidence as an educating parent.

In the first year of homeschooling I'd moved from a school-at-home approach to unschooling and natural learning, and by the time I finished writing Getting Started my youngest was age eight and enjoying learning naturally using a play- and interest- based approach to learning.

And I firmly believe I remained confident with an unschooling approach mainly because each year I recorded on paper our goals for his education and reaffirmed my beliefs about education: this document was our natural learning curriculum.

It demonstrated that we were covering what was expected by society from an educational program for a child of his developmental stage. This curriculum (my planning document), together with our haphazard recording regime, continued to strengthen my confidence in home education.

I did this not to please or satisfy others, or solely for registration purposes. I did this for myself and for my children. I was accountable to my children for their education and it was important for me to be able to justify our choice to home educate to them should they ever ask with proof that I took my role and responsibility as their educator seriously.

But mostly I did it for myself. To keep those nagging doubts at bay, to prove to myself that this home educating gig was actually working. I needed concrete evidence. Recording and planning gave me that.

I am firm believer in the planning process: dreaming, planning, gathering and using of resources, reflecting, tweaking, celebrating and reviewing the process and outcomes, reviewing.

These happen continuously and concurrently, and I find it helps to jot a few notes down in my diary, take a few photos, and every once in a while read through our yearly plan to remind myself why we're educating our children this way.

What I love most about doing this is the freedom it gives us to be flexible, in the same way that understanding how understanding of the nature of the components in our house, and how and when they went together, allowed us to tweak the design here and there as we built.

People think that natural learning and unschooling is unstructured, that it just ‘happens’: it doesn't. Children, much like other people, don’t learn like that. There are rhythms and routines that support the freedom we experience in this lifestyle. These don’t magically appear, we work to create them by conscientious observation and reflection, noting what works and what doesn't and figuring out why. This the foundation upon which our confidence grows.

I find that if we plan our home education journeys well we can be open to enjoying whatever spontaneous opportunities arise. And one thing you can count on, there are usually lots of those!