homeschool_planning v1.0.0

name: homeschool_planning description: "Plan a homeschool week that holds together: build a subject coverage map from the family's actual jurisdiction requirements and each child's level, place daily, family, and loop subjects on one page, keep the teaching adult from being double-booked across siblings, replan mid-week with fixed rules when days are lost, and keep a records log that shows attendance, subjects, and work covered. Ships a tested checker and replan tool, a plan schema, a records and requirements reference, and worked weeks for one child and for siblings at different levels. Use when someone asks to plan a homeschool week or term, fix a homeschool schedule that keeps falling apart, teach siblings at different levels together, work out what records to keep, or recover a week after illness or disruption. Not for designing a single classroom lesson (use lesson plan design), not for a whole course outline for a school or online course (use course outline builder), and not for legal advice about whether a specific family's setup complies."

Homeschool Planning

Purpose

Turn three things, the requirements that actually apply to this family, the week each child actually has, and the subjects each child needs, into one page that survives contact with a real week. Most homeschool plans fail in predictable places: they are built from another state's rules, they need the teaching adult in two places at once, they treat every subject as daily so one sick day creates a debt, and nobody writes anything down until a portfolio or a question forces a reconstruction months later. This skill fixes those four failure points in order.

The deliverable is a set, not a timetable alone: a coverage map per child, a one-page week, replan rules agreed before anything goes wrong, and a records log that fills in as the week happens.

Legal honesty rule: homeschool requirements are set by the family's state or country and they range from no required subjects or hours at all to 180 days, 900 or more hours, named subjects, portfolios, and evaluations. Never state one jurisdiction's requirements as general rules, and never give legal advice. Load the family's actual requirements, name the source, and record the date checked. See references/records-and-requirements.md for the verified range.

Workflow

1. Load the real requirements first

Collect, and ask only for what is missing:

• Jurisdiction: state or country, and the option or statute the family homeschools under if there is more than one.
• Per child: required subjects, required days per year, required hours per year if hours are counted, any testing or evaluation schedule, any portfolio or reporting duty.
• Source: the current official or attorney-reviewed guide for that jurisdiction. Record it and the check date in the plan. If the family cannot name their requirements, look them up with them from that guide before planning anything. Do not plan from memory of another family's rules.
• Family reality: which days are genuinely available, outside classes, work commitments, shared custody days, appointments, and the latest time school can run. A plan for five clean days in a three-day week fails by Friday every time.

2. Interview each child briefly

Per child, in plain terms:

• Level per subject, not just grade. A child can be grade 4 overall, grade 5 in reading, and grade 3 in math, and the map follows the per-subject level.
• What needs the adult: new concepts, phonics, and writing feedback usually do. Practice, reading, and review often do not.
• What the child can truly do alone: start it, stay with it, and finish it without asking for help. If a worksheet needs explaining every time, it is not independent work, whatever the box says.
• Attention span in minutes, honestly. Session lengths come from this, capped by the day limit in step 4, not from a curriculum's default lesson length.

3. Build the coverage map

One row per subject per child, with five fields: sessions per week, minutes per session, mode, kind, and the requirement or family reason it is there.

Modes:

• teacher: needs the teaching adult, one child at a time.
• family: taught to all children together, one shared topic, level-specific follow-up per child.
• independent: the child works alone on work verified as genuinely independent in step 2.

Kinds:

• daily: regular practice or a sequence where falling behind compounds, typically math, reading, phonics, and writing.
• loop: order matters, weekday does not. History, science, art, music, nature study, and similar subjects usually belong here.

Rules for the map:

• Every required subject from step 1 appears, at the frequency the requirement implies. If a requirement is annual rather than weekly, convert it to a weekly or loop share and show the arithmetic.
• Family mode is the default for subjects where levels can share a topic: history, science, read-aloud, art, and nature study. Per-child subjects stay per child: phonics, leveled math, spelling, and writing at each child's level.
• A subject the family values but no rule requires is marked as a family choice, so it is the first candidate to drop in a hard week and nobody confuses dropping it with breaking a rule.
• Total the map before placing anything. If the map needs more teacher minutes than the adult has, the map is wrong, not the adult. Move practice to independent, move shareable subjects to family, or cut frequency before building the week.

4. Place the week on one page

Place in this order:

1. Anchor the daily teacher subjects at the same time each day. Predictability does more for follow-through than variety does.
2. Stagger teacher slots across siblings so the adult is never needed twice at once. While the adult teaches one child, every other child has independent work or a break, named in the plan, not left as "keep busy".
3. Put the family block where everyone is present and freshest, for most families early. One slot, all children, level-specific follow-up after.
4. Put loop subjects in one or two named loop slots. Write the loop as an ordered list beside the page: the next loop session takes the next item, whatever day it lands on.
5. Fill independent work last, matched to the teacher slots it has to cover.

Limits: state the family's own cap on seated minutes per child per day in the plan and respect it. Young children usually carry far less seated time than older ones, but treat any specific number as the family's planning choice, not a rule to quote at them. Leave at least one light day or half day in most weeks. A week with no slack replans by breaking.

Write the plan as JSON following references/plan-schema.md, then run the checker:

python3 scripts/homeschool_week.py check plan.json

Fix every GAP it reports before calling the week ready. The checker verifies per-child coverage against the map, the day cap, and adult double-booking, including the rule that a shared family slot for siblings is one adult slot, not a collision.

5. Run the week and log as you go

Each day, add the actual entries: subject, day, minutes, and one short note with pages, chapter, project, or activity. Same day, while it is known. Append them to the records log:

python3 scripts/homeschool_week.py log plan.json records.csv

Also record non-school days honestly, sick, holiday, travel, in the log notes or attendance mark. An honest attendance record with fewer days is usable. A padded one is a liability if anyone ever checks it against anything.

6. Replan with the rules, not with guilt

When a day or more is lost, run the missed items through these rules in order, or let the tool do it:

python3 scripts/homeschool_week.py replan plan.json

• Loop subjects slide. They are never made up, doubled, or moved onto a named day. The loop continues from where it stopped.
• Daily subjects marked essential move to a remaining day only if that day stays under the cap. If no remaining day fits, they become the first items of next week in their normal slots and the new material shifts. Do not stack a missed lesson on top of a full day and do not use weekends as the default overflow.
• Daily subjects not marked essential, and all family-choice subjects, are dropped on purpose. Write the drop in the records log. A deliberate drop is a planning decision, an unrecorded skip reads later like a gap in coverage.
• After two disrupted weeks in a row, fix the map, not the family's effort: a subject is at the wrong frequency, a session is too long, or a subject marked daily belongs on the loop.

7. Close the term

At the end of each term, produce from the logs, not from memory:

• Days and hours per child against the requirement loaded in step 1, with the source and check date restated.
• Subjects covered per child, with two or three dated work samples per subject filed.
• Reading log, assessment results, and any official correspondence filed with the year.
• One paragraph per child: what moved, what stalled, what changes in next term's map. This paragraph is what makes next year's planning fast, and it is the start of a credible high school record later.

Keep the current year and the two before it complete and easy to produce, and keep high school years permanently. Where the jurisdiction requires longer, its rule wins.

Output Contract

Deliver, in this order:

1. Requirements summary: jurisdiction, per-child required subjects, days, and hours, with source and date checked, and a plain statement that this is planning help, not legal advice.
2. Coverage map per child: subject, sessions per week, minutes, mode, kind, and whether it is required or a family choice.
3. The one-page week: days across, subjects placed, teacher slots staggered, family block marked, loop list written beside it, day cap stated.
4. Checker output: the PASS line, or each GAP with the fix applied.
5. Replan rules for this family, stated before the week starts.
6. Records log started: the CSV from the tool, or the same columns on paper, plus what gets filed at term end and how long it is kept.

Operating Rules

• Never import requirements across jurisdictions. Utah has no required subjects or days, Pennsylvania requires 180 days, a portfolio, and an evaluation, and both facts are useless for planning a family in the other state.
• Never present family-set numbers, session lengths, day caps, or weekly frequencies, as research findings or legal rules. Label them as planning choices.
• Independent means verified independent for that child. Mislabeling hard work as independent is the main reason sibling rotations collapse.
• The adult's time is the scarcest resource in the plan. Count teacher minutes across all children before adding anything, and protect the family block, it is the highest-leverage slot in a multi-child week.
• No catch-up debt. The replan rules exist so a bad week ends on Friday. Anything still owed on Monday is a map problem, handled by changing the map.
• Keep records contemporaneous and plain. Short, dated, and true beats detailed and reconstructed.
• Do not choose or endorse a curriculum as proven to raise achievement. The skill can place a curriculum's lessons on the map and check their time cost. Outcome claims need evidence the family can inspect, and most marketing claims do not have it.
• If the family describes a dispute with a district, a custody issue, or a compliance notice, stop planning and point them to the current jurisdiction guide and, where the stakes are real, a lawyer or their state homeschool association. Planning help is not representation.