My Homeschool Planning Pages

I had been on the hunt for some homeschool planning pages and I couldn’t find quite what I was looking for, so I created my own. I still plan to use my old planning sheet with my kindergarten lessons, but now that my second grader will be covering more subjects, I knew I needed something better. Plus, we use the Sue Patrick's workbox system and I wanted something to help with planning what goes in each box (in our case bag). You can read more about how we have tweaked the workbox system to meet our needs…and desire to NOT have tons of shoe boxes all over the place! LOL Anyhow, I figured I would share my new docs in case someone else can use them as well.

First, I have my Weekly Plans sheet which includes all of my daughter’s subjects. I love that I can see what all is planned for the whole week on a single page. If you notice there are little boxes all over the page. The boxes are for the corresponding workbox number. So, if I want her to do her preposition work first on Monday, I will put a 1 in the box beside it. I plan to do this ahead of time so that I can quickly reload their bags as they complete their work. (In the download I included a blank Weekly Plans page so that you can write in your own subjects if desired.)

The next page is the Weekly Planning List. For each week, I have a list of extra supplies that I will need, a list of things that I still need to do to prepare for the week, and a list of books/videos that I will need to check out from the library. (This printable was inspired by Karin’s lesson planner reminders form on Passport Academy.)

The final page is a blank calendar. This basically helps to give me some sense of direction. I make a rough plan for the year so that I can see what is coming up so that I can plan activities/crafts/fieldtrips, etc accordingly. (I have three columns so that I can keep ONE list for ALL my kids on ONE page. The first column is for my 2nd grader, the second is for my kindergarteners, and the last column is for my preschoolers.)

So, you may be wondering how my actual planning process works. Well, my hope is to have all the lessons planned through December before we actually start school.  We will take a break in December and I hope to get my plans for the rest of the year completed then. {Hopefully this will not turn out to be an over-ambitious goal. So, first I use the calendars to make a rough plan for the year.

Next, I use my Weekly Plans sheet to record all the assignments for the week. As I am going through the lessons, I keep the Weekly Planning List handy and I jot things down on the appropriate lists. That way, it will minimize the things that I will need to try to remember and I will have all my lists for the week in one place. As I obtain a needed supply/book or I have completed something on the to-do list, I check it off. If you notice, I put the day of the week that I need the item in parentheses so that I can know specifically when I need the item or need to have something done.

Once I have completed the Weekly Planning List for that particular week, I gather all the worksheets, etc that will be needed for the week (for all my kids) and put it along with the Weekly Planning List inside a manila folder labeled with the appropriate week. That way I have everything that I will need for all the kids for any given week all in one place.

Once I have written all the assignments on the Weekly Plans sheet, I go through and put numbers in the boxes for each day to correspond with what box (bag) I want the assignment in. I make sure to have all the boxes (bags) assigned at the start of the week so that each day as the kids are completing their assignments/bags, I can begin to load them for the next day. All the Weekly Plans sheets are kept in a notebook, except for the ones currently in use. I will keep them in plain view so that they are readily available for me to refer to (this is especially helpful when the kids are completing bags and I am loading them for the next day).

So, that is how my planning process is going. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. You can download all of my NEW planning pages here and you can download my OLD planning sheet from here. For information on how I use the older planning sheet, see my Workbox Q&A post. You can see more about our workbox system here.