Spring cleaning. What do you think of when you hear those words? You could be thinking about cleaning out your garden to prepare for a new planting season. You could be thinking of cleaning out the clutter in your house or garage to refresh your space.

Or, if you're a homeschool mom, you could be thinking about clearing out your homeschool room, bookshelves, and school desks or tables to prepare for the upcoming school year. Now if you're like me, we are still doing school and will be until June, but I can still get a head start on some things. And so can you!

In today's post, I'm sharing FIVE things I typically do at the end of the year to prepare for the upcoming school year. Grab a coffee or tea and a notepad if my ideas inspire you to tackle your end-of-school-year to-do list. Here are five things I do to prepare for the new school year!

Reflect on this school year.

The first thing we do in our homeschool before looking ahead to the upcoming school year is to spend some time reflecting. First, I spend time in prayer, and then I sit down and chat with my kids about what they've enjoyed and what they'd change, among other things. This time of reflection is so important because it helps with setting goals for our upcoming school year.

It is also a time of celebration! A time to celebrate all you've learned, God's goodness, and another successful school year. Take time to talk with your kids about what they accomplished. It can be satisfying for them to look back at all they learned and get excited for the upcoming school year.

I like to present a yearbook at the end of each year to help them remember all the fun things we did that year. It also allows them to look back to those earlier years when they are older.

Check out some of our last-day-of-school videos below. Warning: you may cry over how little my kids are in some of these videos. I know I will!

Buy next year's curriculum

If you're a homeschool mom, you start thinking about next year's curriculum right about now if you haven't started already. You begin to think over the past year about how the current curriculum worked and whether you need to change or order the next level up.

I won't be touching on specific curriculums in this post as the next four posts will be all curriculum focused. But I will encourage you to do what I do and reflect on how a curriculum served your family over the past year.

Did you find that your family enjoyed using the curriculum?

Were there any hiccups along the way, and if so, was it due to the curriculum or other factors you can control?

I am a big advocate for consistency when using curriculum and not switching each year to try something new. I will admit that we have changed before, but not after sticking with a curriculum for a while to see if it was us or the curriculum that wasn't working.

For a curriculum to serve your family well, it must be given a chance. If you're new to homeschooling, focus not so much on what everyone else uses and think about your children. Think about their learning styles and their learning struggles.

There are so many curriculums to choose from, and some are tailored for students with varying abilities and learning styles. Choose a curriculum, try it for a while, and switch it up if it still isn't serving your family well. But try to avoid switching every year because consistency is key when teaching your kids and will help them progress.

Many homeschool curriculum companies run sales in the spring for the upcoming school year, so be sure to watch out for sales on my Instagram. BJU just ended its annual sale, and The Good and the Beautiful ran a spring sale for 15% off all products in March. Mark your calendars for next year so you don't miss out.

Check out my video on how I prepare for a new homeschool year's curriculum, step by step.

PREPARE WITH ME||*NEW* HOMESCHOOL YEAR CURRICULUM||STEP BY STEP

I'd also like to highlight some helpful resources for those of you that have high school students. I use these high school record-keeping sheets to help prepare for the curriculums I need to buy for the upcoming school year. If you need more help planning for high school, check out my recent homeschooling high school post here.

One last thing for this section. Although we do a year-round schedule most years, I have used different resources to help bridge my kids' learning between one year and the next. We utilize Night Zookeeper not only during the school year, but also during the summer. My kids love it! Also, here are some of the workbooks I've used in the past that have helped my kids work to keep their skills sharp.

Clean out homeschool space.

There is something satisfying about clearing out your homeschool space. We usually tackle this on the last day of school or the day after. It allows us to put our past year behind us and start with a clean slate for the upcoming school year. Below I've listed what I typically do during a cleanout of our homeschool space. I'd like to share one important thing: I don't keep everything. If I did, I would have boxes filling my garage. There is no need for me to keep all the curriculums and all the workbooks. If there are a few sentimental pieces my child or I wish to keep, I'll file them away. But we are very selective. Now onto the cleaning breakdown.

Morning Family Space (Downstairs)

We spend our mornings downstairs around the dining room table. This is where we complete our morning basket time. I have an art supply caddy that holds different items like pencils, markers, glue, scissors, and more that we use during that time. This prevents the need to run up and down stairs to get needed supplies. I start by cleaning this out, throwing away any broken items, and cleaning out the dust or little items like glue on googly eyes inside each compartment.

We also use a rolling cart that houses all our morning basket curriculums. This includes bible study, scripture memorization, science, and history, among other things. You can find out more about my morning basket time from this post. The second part I tackle is the morning cart. I typically start by throwing away any used curriculum workbooks, filing away any samples or documents for record-keeping, and saving some work for memories. Then I pull out any curriculums we'll save for future use and keep what I know we'll be using in the upcoming year in the cart.

Homeschool Room (Upstairs)

This is where most of the cleanup occurs, and I get my kids involved. Typically as my kids clear out their desks, I begin by cleaning out my teacher's basket. This is where I keep answer keys and any extra teacher papers. I will not need the past year's answer keys, so I recycle them along with any other papers that are not needed.

From there, I work with each child to clean out their desks, binders, and bins. We eliminate loose papers, broken pencils, and completed curriculum workbooks. We start fresh with an empty binder and a clean desk.

After helping each child, we tackle the school room. All papers on the bulletin board or the science word wall are taken down, thrown away, or filed away. Next, I tackle the bookshelves. We have several bookshelves, some of which hold books while others hold different curriculum components. I like to review my books and pull out any books I plan to sell. Then I'll go through the bins on my cube shelf and clear out any completed curriculum components or seasonal bundle worksheets. These all get recycled.

Finally, I tackle the art supplies in my laundry room. We do a lot of art in our house, and so by the end of the year, I need to clean out the old supplies and figure out what I'll need for the upcoming school year. This leads me to my last point: making a back-to-school list. After cleaning the school space, I can easily see what I need for the upcoming school year. What better time to make a supply list so I don't forget once I am ready to go shopping?

If you need some cleaning inspiration, check out these YouTube videos.

Go homeschool supply shopping.

You don't have to be the parent of a public school student to love back-to-school shopping! One big difference is that you make the supply list, which can work in your favor if you're on a budget.

During the summer, I like to make a few trips to the store to get supplies rather than one large trip. This allows me to budget for what we need while enjoying our summer off. I mostly get my school supplies from Target, Costco, or Amazon. Check out some of my favorite homeschool supplies and organization systems in this post I wrote last fall: Homeschool Must-Haves.

And if you need some inspiration. Check out these supply hauls on my YouTube channel.

Organizing homeschool space for the new year

When it comes to getting ready for the new school year, I like to tackle smaller tasks over the summer rather than take an entire week to get everything ready. Breaking up my tasks like this helps me stay on track and enjoy my summer break. Below, I summarize what I typically do in the summer months to prepare for the upcoming school year.

Check out my beginning-of-year homeschool organizational videos here:

Homeschool Room

Before setting up my homeschool space, I like to do a quick clean by dusting and wiping down desks, bookshelves, etc. If you homeschool, you know how dirty the baseboards can get behind those desks. My kids help by wiping down the baseboards where their feet are during the school year.

I also like to organize the new curriculums, books, and supplies we collected from our supply shopping trips and make lists of any other supplies we need. I organize my new teacher's guides and answer keys into my teacher's basket next to my upstairs chair.

Finally, I like to organize the bookshelf so it has order. I like to separate them into the following categories: picture books, reference books, chapter books, and a special space for our entire The Good and the Beautiful library books.

Kids' Curriculums & Binders

I have organized my kids' curriculum in different ways over the years. We used latch-mate bins to store each child's curriculum for the longest time. However, in more recent years, I've used larger wire baskets from Target to house their individual curriculum.

I usually have all the curriculum I need for the year by April because I like sharing our choices with you before you start buying your own curriculum. So during the summer, I take a day to pull out all the curriculum and separate it into each of my kids' baskets. There are some curriculums that I put into my kids' binders as well as on the bookshelf. Many of the curriculums I use have multiple workbooks, so I will store the future workbooks on the bookshelf in standing file folder holders.

I also make sure to pull out any copies I need to make for the first month of school so that I am prepared. I love this printer! The ink lasts so long, and it's easy to refill when it is low.

Morning Cart

From the pile of curriculums I collected in April, I also have many curriculums I use for morning basket. We now use a 3-tier cart because we outgrew our morning basket. This cart holds all the curriculum we do as a family.

Some of the books in our morning basket focus on learning about the bible, life skills, poetry, and our country. Some of these books I've included below for reference.

We also store our bibles and bible studies in the cart. Here are a few of our favorite bibles and bible studies.

In addition to these books, we house our science and history curriculums. I will share more about these curriculums in upcoming posts.

Planner & Planning Sheets

Planning is one of my strengths. I am passionate about putting a plan together, especially when planning our upcoming homeschool year. I use a few things to help prepare for our new school year. One of these is printing out my homeschool printables to help prepare for record-keeping and goal-setting. The second is my planner, which is from Erin Condren. You can see more about how I use my planner in my YouTube videos below.

While this post was long, I hope it was helpful for you as you plan your upcoming school year. I know that my mind is already thinking ahead. Before I leave you, let me share a word of encouragement from the book of Proverbs.

"The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps"
- Proverbs 16:9

Remember to always lay your plans at the feet of our Lord in prayer, and he will guide you. Preparing is wise, and fun. But always remain open handed with those plans!

Until next time!

Spring Cleaning || Getting Ready for a New School Year