How to Create a Customized Homeschool Planner

I love homeschool planners. They look so pretty on my desk, ready to be filled with goals and lesson plans. Recently, that is all they have been good for-looking pretty.

It’s not their fault. It’s not that they are not worthy to be written in and used up. In fact up until last year, I used my planner faithfully. Until something changed-my circumstances.

Last year, was the first year my daughter basically flew solo. I didn’t really have to write out lesson plans for her. I used to write out her plans for every subject, but as she did more and more online classes, I was needed less and less. I also stopped doing Together Time (like Morning Time) where I would read aloud to both kids and do a subject together like Bible Study or Character Study. So I didn’t need to plan that out either.

I was just my son and I. So I ended up just writing it into his planner. So my beautiful, very costly planner, did not get used.

Honestly, it had more than I really needed. It was filled with all kinds of nice worksheets but ones that were not going to work for me.

So this year, I decided to make my very own planner.

I have several blogs that I follow that have AMAZING planners you can download, but like all the others, they also have items I don’t need, so I took some from here and there and organized it how I wanted it. I also bought a cheap set of dividers and cut them down to size to match the planner size.

Then took it to Office Depot to get bound together. The grand total at Office Depot was around $9.

First I picked a pretty cover from Plan Your Year from edsnapshots.com Followed by our school year plan and my states requirements (I think its a nice thing to have handy).

Section 1: Calendars

School Year Round planning schedule-I love this planning schedule. I shared here. So that is the first thing in this section.

12 month calendar- I downloaded FiveJs.com free planner (she has over 200 pages in it)
My Weekly Schedule planner- also from Five Js.
Attendance Log-There are so many to choose from. Edsnapshots and Five J’sboth have one and so many others do too. I chose one that fits my style.

Section 2: Goals and Curriculum

Goals for the Year. Again, there are several out there. I know both Edsnapshots and Five Js has one. I ended up picking one from Tinas Dynamic Homeschool Plus. I like how it had Homeschool Goals, Personal Goals, Health Goals and Spiritual Goals.
Curriculum Resources-basically this is our course of study outline with what each of them is doing this year. There are several variations of this one on the web.
Curriculum prices and needs-both of these are from FiveJs.
Materials loaned and borrowed-also from Five Js.
Field trip Planner and Log- Five Js
Books to Read Aloud- also from Five Js.

Section 3: Weekly Glance

This is the section where my weekly plans would have gone. In the past, I had both kids on my planner and I specified what each one of them would do. As I shared, this no longer works for us. So this section will be my Weekly Planning with notes on what things I need to accomplish with them or for them. This is from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus. I made 18 back to back copies.

Section 4: Morning Time

When I told my friend about Morning Time she laughed at me and said “do your kids sit on carpet squares too”. She must not understand Morning Time. I first heard the phrase from Edsnapshots. I am planning to write more about this topic later, so for now I will just share what is in this section.

Morning Time Agenda- what we will do each day for 45 minutes
Goals for the Morning Time-this one comes from a book called How to Home School by Gayle Graham.
Six-week term planner-this is from Donnayoung.org. This is the spot I will plan our Learning Periods for Morning Time. In this section I plan out each day for 6 weeks. We homeschool year round and I break up my year in 6 week Learning Periods.