Handcraft Your Homeschool Year: A Hybrid Planning Workshop

Feeling overwhelmed by planning your homeschool year? You’re not alone! This interactive workshop blends practical how-to guidance from Blair Lee with hands-on planning time, allowing you to create a personalized and effective roadmap for your homeschool journey. You’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions as you plan.

Part 1: Planning Advice

In the first part of this workshop, we’ll explore key elements of effective homeschool planning. You’ll gain insights into how to define your homeschooling vision, set meaningful goals, and structure your year in a way that works for your family. We’ll discuss strategies for managing schedules, organizing curriculum, and creating routines that support learning while reducing stress. This session will also address common planning challenges, offering practical solutions to help you stay flexible and avoid burnout. Whether you’re new to homeschooling or looking to refine your approach, you’ll walk away with strategies to build a plan that is both effective and sustainable.

Part 2: Interactive Planning Session

Now it’s time to put your plan into action!

• Start Building Your Plan – Outline your curriculum map, weekly schedules, and other key planning components.
• Ask Questions & Get Support – Receive personalized guidance and connect with other homeschooling parents and Blair Lee.

This hybrid workshop provides both the knowledge and dedicated time you need to craft a successful homeschool year. You’ll leave with a concrete plan, valuable resources, and the confidence to tackle the year ahead!

Planning Workbook

The Hochman Method (The Writing Revolution) is a highly effective, evidence-based approach that strengthens both writing and reading skills. When applied across subjects, it becomes a powerful tool for developing metacognitive thinking, leading to deeper content mastery. This skills-based, sequential approach is both conceptual and contextual, ensuring that writing is embedded in meaningful, subject-specific learning.

Join Blair Lee and Amy Sharony for this vendor session showcasing their integrative and immersive curriculum, built around the Hochman Method as its core pedagogy. This innovative program includes:

• A skills-based writing program designed to scaffold learning while supporting cognitive load and strengthening essential writing skills.
• Book Nook lessons that teach writing techniques—such as cumulative text, onomatopoeia, visual storytelling through illustrations, and font variations—to enhance meaning and engagement.
• A new history course that begins in Africa and follows the human story through migration, often linked to periods of climate change, with integrated Hochman Method-based writing prompts.
• Two options for science integration:
  • Hochman Method-based writing prompts designed to accompany Real Science Odyssey Earth & Environment 1.
  • Launching in Fall 2025, the Elementary Science Series is an asynchronous online science program featuring Hochman Method-based writing prompts.
• A secular philosophy course that fosters critical thinking and meaningful discussions with embedded Hochman Method-based writing prompts.

These courses will be available for purchase in Summer 2025, individually or as a bundled package. Join us to discover how this comprehensive, skills-based approach can transform learning outcomes for your child!

Is writing a struggle for your learner? Do they lack confidence or avoid writing altogether? Traditional writing instruction often falls short. This talk introduces the Hochman Method, also known as The Writing Revolution (TWR), a sequential, skills-based approach that transforms students into confident, capable writers.

We’ll explore how TWR addresses the common challenges of writing instruction, including:

• Building Foundational Skills: TWR prioritizes sentence-level mastery as the cornerstone of strong writing. Discover how emphasizing quality over quantity, rather than encouraging students to write more before mastering essential skills, leads to greater long-term success in expressing thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively.
• Structure and Organization: Discover how TWR’s emphasis on planning and revision helps students develop well-structured paragraphs and essays.
• Reading and Writing: A skills-based approach not only improves writing but also strengthens literacy. When students become familiar with specific writing structures, they better comprehend and retain content.
• Scaffolding and Differentiation: TWR provides a clear framework for scaffolding instruction and differentiating for learners at all levels, ensuring every student receives the support they need to grow as a writer.
• Beyond Worksheets: One of the most common mistakes homeschoolers make when implementing TWR is relying too heavily on skills-based worksheets without integrating modeling. This talk will address how to effectively teach the skills, concepts, and vocabulary foundational to writing success.

This session will provide a deep dive into the key components of TWR, along with practical strategies to implement them. You’ll gain a fresh perspective on how to unlock writing success for your students and see how The Writing Revolution is more than just a program. It’s a movement that empowers students to become confident and effective communicators.

Blair Lee has completed two multi-session pedagogy courses from The Writing Revolution: Classroom Planning and Implementation, and Advanced Thinking Through Writing.

Science: it’s the key to understanding our world, and fostering a love for it in our homeschoolers is a privilege. But where do we start? Join Blair Lee for this talk provides a roadmap for crafting a robust conceptual science program for middle and high school, moving beyond rote memorization to cultivate critical thinkers and budding scientists. We’ll explore essential elements, including:

• Hands-on Lab Work: From home lab kits to DIY experiments, discover how to make science come alive through engaging and safe lab experiences.
• Cultivating Critical Thinking: Learn how to nurture scientific thinking by emphasizing the scientific method, encouraging questioning, and developing evidence-based reasoning.
• Real-World Connections: Bridge the gap between bookwork and the real world by exploring practical, contextual applications of science and connecting learning to everyday life.
• Math as a Tool: Uncover the power of integrating conceptual and contextual math into science lessons, demonstrating its relevance and application in scientific contexts.
• Curriculum & Resources: Navigate the sea of science curricula and discover supplementary resources to tailor your program to your student’s unique learning style and interests.
• Adapting to Different Levels: Gain insights into tailoring your science program for middle schoolers, preparing them for high school rigor, and equipping high schoolers for college-level science.

This talk is designed for homeschooling parents seeking practical strategies and inspiration to create a dynamic and engaging science program that will ignite a lifelong passion for discovery in their students. Leave with concrete ideas, resources, and a renewed excitement for exploring the wonders of science with your homeschooler.