Did you receive or purchase any shiny new curriculum during the holidays? Personally, I love shopping the homeschool sales—no matter the time of year—and finding resources new to our family. But sometimes it’s important to focus on what matters in our homeschools. In 2025, why not join me in picking a homeschool focus for the new year? Many people like choosing a word for the year. Let’s apply that idea in a similar way to our homeschool.
Choosing a Homeschool Focus for the New Year
There are many ways you can approach this idea of choosing a homeschool focus. Do you want to consider the skills you want to foster in your children? Perhaps they need to brush up on their math skills or you want to focus on life skills and spend more time together gardening, cooking, and preserving food. Maybe it is spending more time outdoors or reading living books.
If your homeschool year runs from September to June, I recommend looking over the lessons you and your children have completed so far to help you get started. Do you see any gaps you want to fill? For example, in our homeschool we have been skipping our art lessons in favor of other subjects. So this year I want to make an effort to focus on those art lessons.
Does anyone homeschool year-round? Look at where you want to be this time next year. Does your curriculum or resources help guide you to the point? Or do you need to find new materials to help you achieve your goals? Focus on what’s missing. If you need new resources, check out HomeschoolingFinds.com or The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine for trusted companies. Or perhaps sign up for SchoolhouseTeachers.com where you can find hundreds of courses from all subject areas to fill the gaps.
For some families, relationships may be at the center of their homeschool focus for the new year. During the colder months you may be stuck inside more often. Co-op classes or activities may be cancelled because of bad weather or illness. There may be no indoor sports leagues to sign up for locally. So, it becomes even more important for brothers and sisters to spend time together and get along. Focusing on relationship building between siblings and other family members is a great idea for the new year.
Putting Your Focus into Action
Do you like to jump in with both feet and start big? Or do you like to roll out new ideas in your homeschool slowly? Can I share a secret? I like to do both. For me it depends on what the new resource, curriculum, or focus is that helps me determine how we start. As a manager for the Homeschool Influencer Network and curriculum reviewer for my own blog, our household receives new homeschool resources regularly throughout the year. Some of them make me push our old curriculum to the side for a while so we can try out the new ones. Others I introduce more slowly to see if they will work for our family.
For our homeschool focus this year it’ll be easy to bring the lessons back into our regular days. Our curriculum already provides art lessons. Now I just need to carve time out to complete them. That might mean less video gaming a few days a week or more meal planning so I have more time daily. My children will also need to be more independent in some areas too. They can do many lessons by themselves. Now they actually have to do the lessons without me sitting with them.
If you are looking to add in art like we are, there are many places you can turn. The spine of our homeschool curriculum is My Father’s World. This year the art is focused on world cultures. My children have drawn lions, made origami, created a hide painting, and drawn a cityscape. We have also included a lesson available via SchoolhouseTeachers.com where they drew their own nutcrackers. And here are a few more places you can find art lessons:
- Bringing Art and Music into Your Homeschool (a variety of resources presented)
- Art Instruction for Elementary through High School (ARTistic Pursuits)
- Creating a Masterpiece Online Art Curriculum (Creating a Masterpiece)
- Have I Got a Story For You Art History Video Series Reviews (HiGASFY Art History Video Series)
- SchoolhouseTeachers.com Courses: Elementary Art, All About Art, Achieving Art Success with ArtAchieve, and more!
Finding Your Homeschool Focus for the New Year
What will be your focus for the new year? Here are some ideas to help you get started:
- Bible reading
- Life skills
- Relationship building
- Remedial skills
- New approach to homeschooling (unschooling, Charlotte Mason, classical)
- Homeschool outdoors
- Join a co-op
- Start a Schoolhouse
If you have any other ideas, please share in the comments.
HomeschoolingFinds.com Author
This article has been written by Kristen Heider. She is the Business Building Team Manager and the Social Media Manager of The Old Schoolhouse®. She shares more about her family’s homeschooling journey at A Mom’s Quest Teach.