Planners
HOMESCHOOL PLANNER FOR PARENTS
The planner contains a cover page, a year-at-a-glance calendar page, two attendance record pages, a monthly overview sheet, a two-page spread for each month of the year, and a monthly reflections page. Additionally, there is a two-page spread for each week broken into days of the week and subject categories. There are two unique sets of weekly pages, allowing you individualized sets for up to two children. Each set contains quotes from my children that I have been collecting since they learned how to talk. The pages are filled with my children’s original illustrations. For the last year, making clipart together became a monthly project. We all sat down together and drew pictures. Even my four-year-old contributed his artistic skills. Some of the clipart drawings were contributed by my husband or me, as my children could only draw so many pictures before they tired of the process each month. This allows you individualized sets for up to two children. The planner is available as a pdf download, so if you are keeping track of more than two kids, you can print off as many of the weekly pages as you need to accommodate your family. The pdf is designed to be printed double-sided, so the blank pages you see are intended to be there. Once you download and print the materials, you can hole punch them and put them in a binder, use a binding machine to make a bound booklet, or assemble them any other way that suits your needs!
Annual Progress
Year-at-a-Glance
This page contains a small calendar for each month of the year. The key provides three white boxes: “In Session,” “Recess,” and “Beginning of Term.” You can fill in each box with a highlighter of a different color and then highlight dates in the calendar to match your schedule.
You have two options for how to use this page: 1) You can plan out your schedule for the whole year by highlighting the dates you plan to be in session and those you plan to take off, or 2) You can highlight the days on a weekly basis if you do not want to try planning out a whole year in advance.
The box labeled “Total Weeks Planned” gives you a space to write in the total number of weeks you are planning to homeschool as indicated by the dates you highlighted on the monthly calendars. Under “Requirements,” you can fill in the number of hours or days your state requires that you homeschool each year.
Attendance Record
Your pdf download includes two attendance records in different colors, allowing you to record the hours you homeschool each day for two children. If you have more than two children, you can print off as many copies of the attendance record sheets as you require.
This attendance form is meant to provide a daily, monthly, and yearly record of the hours you spend homeschooling. Each day, fill in the colored column with codes to reflect how you spent that day, as indicated in the key: attending, holiday, sick, or field trip. In the white column, record the number of hours you homeschooled that day.
At the bottom of each column is a summary box. In the colored box, you may write the number of days of attendance that month (if you need to record this information). In the corresponding white box, you record the total number of hours spent homeschooling that month.
At the bottom right of the page is a box marked “Total,” where you can record the total number of days spent homeschooling over the course of the year (if needed) and the total number of hours spent homeschooling. It’s quite amazing to see that total at the end of the year!
Monthly Organization
Monthly Overview
Each month begins with an overview page that has colorful boxes to help you organize some of the main things you want to complete each month. Are you studying ancient Egypt? List it under “Themes/Topics.” Are you completing a lapbook about the human body? Add it under “Projects/Crafts/Lapbooks.” Are you reading The Hobbit? List it under “Literature Selections.” Are you trying to teach your child about place value by playing Dino Math Tracks? Write it down under “Games for Enrichment.”
Some of the boxes have squares that can be checked off upon completion.
Visited a science museum? Check!
Studied Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley? Check and check!
Finally finished that Spanish lesson plan? Check!
Monthly Calendar
The monthly calendar is similar to any other monthly calendar, and I’m pretty sure you know how to use one. Record family birthdays, trips, your work schedule, a chore list, deadlines for projects, meal plans, and any other information you need to write down to help your life run more smoothly.
Each monthly calendar includes clipart illustrations from our family and a quote from a literary work or an author.
Don’t forget to record the date or dates that you need to provide information to your state to comply with your state’s homeschooling laws!
Recording Your Week
This is where most of your recordkeeping will happen. There is a two-page spread for each week that is broken into individual days. Each subject is in a different color. I use a color-coded system for all of our homeschooling subjects. The colors you see for each subject match binders that my children have for each subject. I find color-coded materials to be very helpful.
This can be used two ways. When I first started homeschooling, I was very ambitious about what we could get done in a day. I filled out the boxes ahead of time and checked off tasks as we completed them. I was often left feeling disheartened because I never got everything checked off. It was much better for my self-esteem when I switched my tactics. Instead of writing down my plan every day, I started using these pages to record what we ACTUALLY did each day. I was writing down plenty of completed tasks and I felt much better when I looked at my planner! For some people, it may be more useful to plan out the week in advance. For example, my sister works outside of her home and fills out her weekly plan ahead of time. While she is at work, her son makes sure he completes the tasks she has listed, while Gramma provides any needed help.
I keep my notations relatively short and use abbreviations for books we use frequently. It’s always easy to see where we left off and need to begin the next day!
Wrapping Up the Month
Monthly Reflections
After you complete all of your weekly pages for a given month, you’ll find one final page that you have the option of completing for the month. The last page is basically a large box that you can use to summarize your month. This page can include special moments, happenings you want to remember down the road, or challenges you see ahead in the next month.
Did you child make big progress learning how to read? Did they finally memorize their multiplication tables? Did you have a really good nature walk this month? Did your children write and perform their own puppet show? Do you feel like you really need to spend more time on geography next month? Any of this information can be recorded as you reflect on your month. There is a monthly reflection page for each set of weekly pages, so you will get two separate reflection pages in your pdf download. If you want to use one and write about all of you children on one page, then you certainly don’t need to print both. If you’re really ambitious, you can print off extras!
HOMESCHOOL PLANNER FOR KIDS
Have your children reached an age where they want a little more responsibility with keeping track of their work? Have you reached a point where you NEED them to start developing a little more responsibility? The planner for kids is a much simpler planner than the planner for adults or teens. It is not meant to replace the other planner. Rather, it allows kids to start learning how to do a little planning and recording of their own.
While I developed the planner, my oldest son sat next to me and designed it. He told me what colors he wanted, what he wanted boxes for, what the boxes should say, and what other information he felt was important for him to remember each week. To that end, it has some very interesting components!
Like the adult planner, the kid planner is a pdf download and is set up to be printed double-sided. For now, I only have one set of planner pages, so if you have more than one child using the planner you will have to print off multiple copies. If this planner is popular, I may design a second set with a different color scheme and clipart. When the kid planner is downloaded and printed, it can be whole-punched and stored in binder or bound as a booklet.
Monthly Calendar
The monthly calendar in the kid planner only takes up half of a page. Kids can use it to keep track of the same things that parents do: big projects, chores, birthdays, vacation days. Okay, maybe kids don’t need to keep track of work schedules and meal plans, but that’s why we just did half of a page for their calendar. New for the 2021-2022 calendar is a quote for each month providing advice from another homeschooling child.
My son wanted two sections on the bottom to organize his month: goals and monthly projects. In beginning to take on more responsibility for his education, he thought it was good for him to start setting goals about what he wanted to accomplish each month. The space reserved for monthly projects allows him to say a little bit more about a project than he can put in his calendar. I am not big on setting definitive deadlines for many projects, either, so providing space to write down what projects he should be working on seemed like a better approach than having more room on the calendar.
Weekly Pages
My son really enjoyed designing this page with me. We injected a little humor by a calling the weekly page, “Finish It Already!” Did I say I’m not big on setting definitive deadlines? Well, I’m also not okay with projects never being finished. That’s how we ended up with a section called, “Do This First!” My children know that they really need to finish the tasks they put there. This is followed by a section called, “Do This Next!” The goal is for most things to be completed from that box before they end up in, “Do This First!”
There are also boxes for you child to write down what they are reading, both fiction and nonfiction, chores they need to do that week, and appointments they have. (This was very helpful when my son had frequent orthodontic appointments.) I was very touched that my son wanted to include a box for jotting down “Acts of Kindness” and a small box to write down something he was grateful for each week. I have been quite touched by some of the things my daughter has written she is grateful for, and some have made me laugh out loud! (Although I am grateful for Doctor Who, too.)
The most unusual things we included are at the bottom of the page. We try hard to make sure our kids are getting enough exercise, especially in the winter when our weather greatly limits our ability to be outside. There are symbols on the bottom to represent a weightlifter (not that my kids actually lift weights). Every time they do a workout, they cross off a weightlifter. The other symbols on the bottom represent glasses of water and bars of soap. Yes, for a while my kids needed to be reminded to take showers. Every time they took a shower they could check off a bar of soap. I am happy to report that they no longer need reminders to take showers! I feel like I am constantly reminding my children to drink more water, so my son wanted a reminder on his planner. Every glass of water he drinks means he can cross off another water drop for the days of the week. (Yes, I abbreviated Sunday with a “U.” Unconventional, but I could only fit one letter in the circle.) Children of different sizes need different amounts of water, so you can decide with your child the appropriate number they should cross off every day.
The weekly pages for each month look identical except that they have different dates on the top.
PURCHASE A PLANNER
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