Charlotte Mason believed that you couldn't give your child an excellent education unless you had an end in sight.

What do you want for your child? Do you want them to be involved in the family business? Are they gifted in music, maybe a teacher?

You know where your child is gifted, what they desire and what goals you have for them.  If your child has wanted to be a NASA scientist from birth- well then getting them immersed in math and science early will be essential, and that is where planning is key.

Whether you use the Charlotte Mason approach or not, here is a resource that may help you plan your child's education well.

The great thing about a plan is that it can be revised often.  We intend to review our plan every year, evaluate our child's goals, what is working and what is not.  Simply Charlotte Mason has a basic plan already available for you to use and modify.  It is a great place to start, you can see that I've used their suggested Modules for Poetry, Picture Study, Hymn Study and Literature in my children's education plan. (All Module 1 resources)

I decided to go one step further and put our plans on paper all together so we can see our "big picture" all at one time.

You can download our homeschool plan in a pdf document here.  You can see we have many areas that we have not filled in, and we have other areas that we know exactly what we want to use.  This plan is our baseline, where we go when we are looking at new curriculum, feeling like we might be getting of track or just need to check our progress.

For me, the obnoxious planner, it gives me a peace of mind, it also helped my husband feel like he was aware of the broad picture and able to catch any obvious holes.

Not to mention that it is pretty impressive when people question our homeschooling choice! ;)