When the temperature passes the century mark and I'm thinking about how to stay cool and help everyone stay occupied, often the last thing I want to do is think about planning for our homeschool year. But I know, from years of experience, that if I don't plan now, by October everything falls apart and our homeschool can start to look a bit like Lord of the Flies.

Knowing that our coming year will likely be bringing more children through adoption as well as a continued busy travel schedule for my husband, I'm making a real effort to plan as much in advance as possible so that I can focus on cuddling my babies, young and old alike.

In comes Pam Barnhill's new e-book Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace. (affiliate link)

Pam has done a fabulous job of laying out, step-by-step, a way for you to plan your homeschool year. What I LOVE the most about it is that she doesn't assume that you will do it exactly the way that she does it. She gives examples from her own family as well as other families so you can see a variety of possibilities and choose what works best for you and your family's situation.

The book includes over 40 printable pages, all of which are referenced in the chapters. Each chapter is brief, with a well-written explanation of the topic. Each chapter then ends with action points (another favorite part because I often need a kick in the pants!), as well as a section called More For You, which gives you more resources to explore from around the internet.

One of the things that sets Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace apart from other books on homeschool planning is that Pam has included links to specially recorded videos and audios with even further explanations and information about what she's presented in the book. BRILLIANT! So when she is talking about creating a homeschool binder, she also includes a link to a video by Mystie Winckler of Simplified Organization who explains step by step how to save the .pdf document into Evernote if you are choosing to go paperless. How cool is that??

I spent a good amount of time last weekend, reading through the book, watching the videos, and printing off some of the planning pages, I've started jotting down notes, firming up plans in my head. I spent a lot of time on Chapter Ten, which was on Planning Your Day. I'm still mulling over the ideas that she presented there, trying to decide what will work best for my children.

If you are needing some extra help this summer to plan your coming homeschool year, I highly recommend Pam Barnhill's book Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace. If you'd like to see a preview of some of the printable planning pages that she has created as part of the book, you can pop over to her website Everyday Snapshots and subscribe to her email list and you will receive 11 pages of planning pages, for free!