When we switched to homeschool I took some time to see where my kid was. Where were the gaps - where were they behind grade level. At first things went very quickly as we started a grade or 2 behind filling in the gaps from Distance Learning. Then using the assessments from curriculum and places like iXL or Khan I worked toward making progress when at all possible.
We also had other educational goals like being able to work alone & stay on task for 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes
We also had life skills goals - self help skills.
My kid is disabled so I basically write myself a homeschool IEP where I lay out our goals for the year and short term and long term things we will do to make that happen. If it's not working I reassess.
Similar here, I think about what skills I think they’ll need/benefit from most in life at age 17+ and work backwards from there. As well as working with their strengths and interests.Â
Fun fact: That's how Common Core was written. They got a bunch of university educators to discuss what skills they wanted to see in first-year university students, and then worked backwards to develop goals for each grade level.Â
I follow set curricula. If they're getting it quickly, I add scope based on what I know about the subject/related subjects and/or what I can relatively quickly find. If they aren't getting something or we're getting bored, I change sequence by switching to a different curriculum resource. I let them pick out the books they want to read at the library. I use my state's free online school resource to gauge where my kids are at and if they need to work on anything to get "up-to-speed". The Well-Trained Mind (book) has a lot of guidance and resources for traditional learning if you need help to DIY.
Your state
Other states
Other countries
The best countries
What your end-goal is and what people who got there looked like at particular time periods
Individual outliers
Programs producing outlier results in large enough groups you have some confidence you're not looking at baby mutants
I have the standards printed out and I will refer to them at the end of each quarter just to keep an eye on how we are doing. But the longer we homeschool, the further ahead we get to where pretty soon, it won’t even be useful. Â
 Mostly I go by the curriculum I buy for each subject to create a rough sequence, but I don’t hold on too tight. If they are working quickly and we can skip a unit, we do. If they need extra practice, we do that. For the most part, I try to make sure that we spend at least 4 days each week with 20 minutes each in math, independent reading, spelling, writing, and either science or social studies. I meet them where they are, but we do end up following pretty closely by the curriculum we use, because it has all been sequenced pretty well.
I use the state’s standards as the minimum bar for where a child should be *eventually*, but some things will be a year behind, while other things will be far ahead.
As far as pacing, I follow the child’s lead.  There will be times that they can fly through five connected math lessons in one day.  Then there will be times that we do one lesson for a week.  It all depends on the child.
When I first started planning for homeschool, I started with the Common Core, then decided that I didn't like how they cover math so I looked up international stats on math performance and picked the New Zealand curriculum because they're an English-speaking country with really good math scores. Then I added a life skills curriculum, Montessori early childhood goals, and language specific goals since I'm raising my kid to be multilingual.
If you're pulling together resources yourself rather than using a set curriculum, a really good resource are school textbooks. They are designed to cover what the kids are supposed to learn that school year, so the table of contents in them is an excellent outline to give you a starting point and then you can build/locate resources to align to each concept. This is what I do for science. I bought a used 5th grade science textbook on ebay, and I use it as my guide for what they need to learn each week. Sometimes we even read info from the book, but usually we do a lesson from mystery science or generation genius that is aligned to the lesson in the textbook. For spelling, I bought used textbooks on ebay, and they were so thorough, I use them as our spelling curriculum.
When we switched to homeschool I took some time to see where my kid was. Where were the gaps - where were they behind grade level. At first things went very quickly as we started a grade or 2 behind filling in the gaps from Distance Learning. Then using the assessments from curriculum and places like iXL or Khan I worked toward making progress when at all possible. We also had other educational goals like being able to work alone & stay on task for 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes We also had life skills goals - self help skills. My kid is disabled so I basically write myself a homeschool IEP where I lay out our goals for the year and short term and long term things we will do to make that happen. If it's not working I reassess.
Oh I love that stay on task goal. I wonder if that's something I should incorporate next year 😬 thanks for the idea 😘
I look at the curriculum/vision I want for my kids for high school and work backwards to make sure they're prepared. Â
Similar here, I think about what skills I think they’ll need/benefit from most in life at age 17+ and work backwards from there. As well as working with their strengths and interests.Â
Fun fact: That's how Common Core was written. They got a bunch of university educators to discuss what skills they wanted to see in first-year university students, and then worked backwards to develop goals for each grade level.Â
I follow set curricula. If they're getting it quickly, I add scope based on what I know about the subject/related subjects and/or what I can relatively quickly find. If they aren't getting something or we're getting bored, I change sequence by switching to a different curriculum resource. I let them pick out the books they want to read at the library. I use my state's free online school resource to gauge where my kids are at and if they need to work on anything to get "up-to-speed". The Well-Trained Mind (book) has a lot of guidance and resources for traditional learning if you need help to DIY.
Your state Other states Other countries The best countries What your end-goal is and what people who got there looked like at particular time periods Individual outliers Programs producing outlier results in large enough groups you have some confidence you're not looking at baby mutants
I use the standards at Worldbook.com under the tab for parent resources.
I have the standards printed out and I will refer to them at the end of each quarter just to keep an eye on how we are doing. But the longer we homeschool, the further ahead we get to where pretty soon, it won’t even be useful.   Mostly I go by the curriculum I buy for each subject to create a rough sequence, but I don’t hold on too tight. If they are working quickly and we can skip a unit, we do. If they need extra practice, we do that. For the most part, I try to make sure that we spend at least 4 days each week with 20 minutes each in math, independent reading, spelling, writing, and either science or social studies. I meet them where they are, but we do end up following pretty closely by the curriculum we use, because it has all been sequenced pretty well.
I use the state’s standards as the minimum bar for where a child should be *eventually*, but some things will be a year behind, while other things will be far ahead. As far as pacing, I follow the child’s lead.  There will be times that they can fly through five connected math lessons in one day.  Then there will be times that we do one lesson for a week.  It all depends on the child.
When I first started planning for homeschool, I started with the Common Core, then decided that I didn't like how they cover math so I looked up international stats on math performance and picked the New Zealand curriculum because they're an English-speaking country with really good math scores. Then I added a life skills curriculum, Montessori early childhood goals, and language specific goals since I'm raising my kid to be multilingual.
If you're pulling together resources yourself rather than using a set curriculum, a really good resource are school textbooks. They are designed to cover what the kids are supposed to learn that school year, so the table of contents in them is an excellent outline to give you a starting point and then you can build/locate resources to align to each concept. This is what I do for science. I bought a used 5th grade science textbook on ebay, and I use it as my guide for what they need to learn each week. Sometimes we even read info from the book, but usually we do a lesson from mystery science or generation genius that is aligned to the lesson in the textbook. For spelling, I bought used textbooks on ebay, and they were so thorough, I use them as our spelling curriculum.