Planning & Schedules

Homeschooling families need to incorporate kids and education into everything we do. A homeschooling life is one that can require that you attend to many things at the same time; academics, classes, sports, meals, cleaning, administration, child care, etc.

Doing that well, often requires some planning. Here are some tools that may help you get started. None of the tools here will work perfectly for your unique family. You will likely need to tweak them to fit your unique family or simply use them as inspiration for creating your own systems.

Ideas for Organizing Systems

This PDF outlines 8 popular organizing systems homeschoolers use to manage their time, curriculum, and space effectively. It covers approaches such as block scheduling, visual tools, digital lesson tracking and more. If offers flexible options designed to be adapted for use in your unique family. Each system is explained with tips for implementation and examples of how it can be adapted to different homeschooling styles.

Learning Period Analysis

This fillable PDF is perfect to complete with your student at the end of the learning period. It is a great tool to bring to your parent-teacher meetings to help spark conversation between the student and the teacher. It is useful for giving both parent and child a chance to reflect on the most recent learning period to see what you've accomplished together and where you can grow.

Finding Your "Why"

Having a deep understanding of why you're homeschooling can provide a strong foundation upon which all other homeschooling decisions are based. Your why should be something that connects with your values and is both uplifting and grounding. This worksheet will help you draft a homeschool mission statement that's right for your unique family. Revisit it frequently allowing it to grow and evolve to meet the changing needs of your family.

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MId-Year Reflection

This reflection worksheet for homeschoolers is a comprehensive tool tailored for assessing the past semester. It prompts thoughtful consideration of educational systems, curriculum effectiveness, engagement in activities, and progress toward goals, empowering homeschooling parents and students to refine their approach for a more successful and fulfilling learning experience in the upcoming semester.

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Create a Google Classroom

This is a step-by-step guide for how to get started using Google Classroom to organize assignments. This is a great tool for helping kids know what to work on, keep track of progress, and organize resources. These instructions are designed for homeschoolers by homeschoolers.

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Picture Based Assignment Tracker

This tracker is designed to help younger kids keep track of work they've completed and work they have left. Kids will move each subject to the done section making it easy for them and the parents to see how their school work is progressing.

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Complete Planner Set

This planner set allows you to intentionally and thoughtfully plan out your family's learning. It starts with a look at the whole year and then breaks it down into learning periods, weeks, and finally daily assignments. This set will save you loads of time and worry. You will always know the answer to "What are we working on today?"

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Assignment Organizer

This assignment organizer is designed to support kids improve their executive functioning. It's perfect for kids with ADHD and/or high schoolers ready to start organizing their own work. It gives them an overview of the work they need to do and then helps them break it down by day and project. Parents can also use it as an organizer for younger kids' assignments.

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Simplified Assignment Organizer

This organizer is a simpler version of the original assignment organizer. It contains a master list and a 3-day assignment scheduler. If you need more days or more assignment sheets, simply print out as many you need of each one.

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Daily Schedule

This Daily Schedule is a flexible scheduling tool designed for homeschoolers. It is useful for designing your regular schedule — meaning those activities that repeat every week. It works best as a planning and reference tool. It comes with option for families of various sizes. This planner works well in conjunction with the Weekly Planner.

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Weekly Planner

The Weekly Planner is a tool to help homeschoolers plan their regularly scheduled activities. It gives you an overview of how your week looks. We've designed it to be flexible to meet your family's unique needs and goals. This planner works well in conjunction with the Daily Schedule.

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Learning Profile

This quick worksheet is designed to help you (and your teacher) see at a glance what the learning needs are of each of your kids. This can help guide curriculum and class selection. It can also help identify obstacles you may encounter and strengths you may want to nurture.

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Subject Planner

This is an easy and straight-forward worksheet to use when you're planning for an upcoming school year. It will help you plan how you want to teach each subject and what curriculum or supplies you will need.

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6-week Learning Planner

This simple worksheet will help you decide what you are going to teach over the next 6 weeks. It is divided into topics, activities, and weeks. Most school years are 36 weeks long. They are divided into 6 learning periods of 6 weeks. Many local charter schools will require work samples every learning period. This worksheet is a great tool for planning the upcoming learning period.

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Daily Rhythm Planner

This is a planner to help you find your daily flow. We've included an example of how it might work for one family along with a blank copy for you to complete in a way that works best for your family.

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Learning Log

This is a fun worksheet designed to celebrate learning in all its forms. Homeschooled kids often spend their days learning in natural, interest-driven ways. They have time to pursue their passions and this worksheet gives you a way to track of this type of student-led learning. It can be comforting on those days when you're not getting much of the academic work done, to see that they learned in many other ways. This worksheet also works well for unschooling families who want to keep track of and support the pursuits of their kids.

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Yearly Reflection

Homeschooling well means being willing to make iterative changes as your skills improve and your family's needs change. This worksheet is designed to offer some structure for reflecting on the past year (or semester) so you can identify what your next best step is in building your best homeschooling life. Pages with blank space are included so you can look at area that matter to you, but are maybe not included already. Page 7 looks at curriculum and you want to print out 1 child.

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Helpful Systems

Feeling overwhelmed? This 2 page handout has descriptions of various types of systems that homeschoolers often create to help their homeschool life run more smoothly. You probably have systems for some of these areas in your home already. The details of each system will be unique to your family which is why we've chosen not to create a system for you. Rather, we wanted to give you starting point from which to develop systems that work best for your family.

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Systems Checklists

This a checklist designed to help you take inventory of systems that you have in place and others that you might want to create.

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Learning Period Summary

This is a worksheet designed to help you summarize the learning your kids did in the past the Learning Period. It can be a useful tool for tracking learning and communicating your progress with your charter school.

Ideas?

Do you have a system that works really well? We'd love to share your idea with other families to make their journey a little smoother. Send us a message with your idea and we'll contact you for more information. Thank you!