This is the perfect homeschool planner for the family who follows a more relaxed style. Rather than scheduling every activity and lesson down to the minute for months ahead of time, this planner provides a clear, general structure to help guide you as you gather ideas and resources, make goals for each subject, sketch out what topics you want to cover within your overall framework each week, and — most importantly! — record in more detail the learning that actually took place, based on your plans and all the spontaneous learning moments that happen naturally in life. 🙂
Enjoy the freedom and joy that homeschooling provides, without losing sight of your goals or losing track of all the little learning moments! <3
Would you describe your homeschooling style with any of the following terms?
- eclectic
- child-focused
- interest-led
- unit studies
- relaxed
If so, this may be a perfect fit for you! Actually, even if your homeschool style is more classical or fits in any of several other categories, you will likely still be able to make good use of this :).
I taught middle and high school math for 6 years, and used all types of planners. I lesson-planned down to the finest detail, filling in All The Spaces (for the first month … then it usually fell apart a bit … 0_o). That worked well for a very structured environment with hundreds of students and thousands of learning goals and millions of individual needs …
… but now that I’m homeschooling, I need something different. I want to embrace the freedom that homeschooling provides – the freedom to follow spontaneous interests and delve as deeply into unit studies as my kids will allow 😉 – and take a child-focused approach that cultivates a lifelong love for learning and works with each child’s individual strengths and learning styles.
So I created a homeschool planner that would enable me to capture all my inspiration and “big ideas” for homeschooling, provide a framework for weekly goals, and still allow plenty of freedom for spontaneous, real-world learning – with organized templates for recording learning moments according to categories and subjects (if you so choose).
And if you’re interested in reading more about the curriculum choices and resources we’ve found most helpful, you can read my full blog post here: Our favorite homeschooling resources.
Video Preview
If you’d like a visual walk-through, you can see a short “sneak-peak” video of the different sections in this planner on my (slowly growing) YouTube channel.
Details
This homeschool planner will work for multiple children of any age – you can print out one per child, or use one set for all your children (especially if you do a lot of unit studies and collaborative learning) — or you can create one large planner with a separate set of pages for each child where a certain section works better for you to use individually.
This planner will help you pin down all your inspiration, goals, and learning objectives for each child for the entire year and turn them into flexible action plans that will give you a general structure for each week, so that you’re not constantly going back to the drawing board trying to research activities every day.
The templates in the “year-at-a-glance” section will help you think concretely through what you want to accomplish in each subject through the year, then the following sections break that down into units of study (defined by a time frame that works for you), weekly goals, and records of real-time learning.
This planner will fit your needs perfectly if you want to homeschool your children based on their individual needs, interests, and learning styles rather than planning out a schedule based primarily on curriculum schedules and deadlines.
This planner provides flexibility at every level to plan in a way that works best for you and your family, while providing enough structured templates and fun record-keeping charts to help you not lose track of the big picture and the details of daily learning that do take place constantly.
With an eye towards simplicity and flexibility, this planner provides an organized way to keep track of goals, ideas, inspiration, unit studies, resource wish lists, contacts, craft ideas, adventures, to-do lists, and even menu planning.
Sections
The homeschool planner is broken into the following sections:
- Year-at-a-glance: an overview of goals and resources for each subject (comes with 14 suggested subject areas, plus blank pages in every relevant section for you to fill in your own subjects)
- A monthly calendar for keeping track appointments and important dates
- Weekly goals sheet to map out specific resources and learning objectives by subject & make plans to fit activities and projects into your chosen number of time slots per week (plus general to-do lists broken into common categories)
- Weekly Record Sheets to record what actually took place during the week in each subject category (lessons covered, books read, projects finished) based on the planned activities & any spontaneous learning activities that came up during the week. (Plus … A blank record sheet that can be adapted to your own subject choices)
- Unit Study Planning Template
- Books, Websites, and Apps Lists with a set of mini journaling templates to create an annotated bibliography of the best books you read
- Resource Wish List
- Ideas Lists for hands-on activities and adventures
- Meal planning and grocery shopping lists
- Connections chart (to keep track of new friends and families)
- Attendance calendar (since some states require you to check off at least 180 days where you completed at least 4 hours of school work)
Each section contains a set of templates that you can print as many times as you would like to fit your needs. The complete pdf file is 45 pages long, but you can choose which parts work best for you. Some will be printed once a year, others per unit, and some sections are meant to be used on a weekly basis. All pages are designed to be as printer-friendly as possible; they can be printed in black-and-white without losing any quality (besides a bit of pretty!) and nothing is too graphics intensive.
I’ve created this to include everything I could possibly need to help me stay on top of things as a homeschooling mom, while giving myself the freedom to follow my children’s interests and help them enjoy learning, working with their unique personalities and strengths. I hope that it helps you stay as organized as you would like to be while pursuing the love of learning with your own family!
This homeschool planner can be used year after year, but I will most likely update it again next year.
Lifetime free access to all updates
This purchase includes lifetime free access to all updates. Since I will be using this myself with my own kids, I’m sure I will think of ways to improve and enrich this throughout the year. When I do update this product, I will notify you through email and you can go back to your “my purchases” tab and re-download the new version for free, even though the price will be much higher at that point. (You can also check the “my purchases” tab any time on your own, in case you miss the email from me.)
See the Homeschool Planner here.
More Products
If you’re looking for more homeschooling resources built around hands-on activities designed to foster a lifelong love of learning, you can check out my store here.
Here is a small sampling of products that spans preK – high school:
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