Homeschool planner? ...and how do you plan??

[homeschoolmama37]

I had planned to order Mardel's A Simple Plan homeschool planner, but unfortunately have discovered they are only available in stores and not online, and that they are discontinuing the planner. I don't live in a state with a Mardel store.

 

I've looked at Well Planned Day, but I'm just wondering, what do you all use for planning? Any options, online, cd-rom or paper are fine suggestions. I prefer a paper planner, but I will consider any style.

 

I'd also love to hear ideas on how you plan your year. I'm stuck in a rut and need some ideas! 

[theelfqueen]

Last year I used the Mardel planner -- this year I'm hoping to make a Simple Stories planner work because I like it better ;) but it doesn't have nearly as much space... So, I'm not sure.

 

[Um_2_4]

I custom make mine. Using word and making tables. Like this year we are doing US History and Geography all together so I can make a table listing states for the week, read alouds, activities, assigned reading. Then I bind with my proclick. I laminate the covers (printed on cardstock) for durability.

 

ETA: I tried a 3 ring binder but that was tooo thick. I do keep school docs I am not using daily in one (our year long plan, longer term planning, affidavit, etc.).

Edited July 18, 2016 by Um_2_4

[Needingdirection]

Idk what age you are working with, but here is what I've decided to do for preschool:

 

1st I took an inventory (in a notebook. Format: material/grade/number of lessons or pages etc)

Then I wrote down the materials for this year (with pages or number of lessons) on the next notebook pages and divided by subject

And then I wrote a week by week goals list (x material and page numbers for that week)

 

And then since it's preschool, I'm going to put everything in front of her and she pick what we do and when and for the most part I will even let her choose to not do something (although from what I've seen when I've let her play while I worked on said lists, I think I've chosen well and am not too worried about her not liking what I've picked).

 

And then I think I'll hang a wall chart of some sort with stickers for her to put on and of she fills the chart then we will have some sort of awesome reward that is to be determined.

 

It's kinda timberdoodle style. They do a weekly list and just divide things out over the number of weeks the school year goes and I really like that format.

 

Edit to add: I pretty much did all that cuz I'm weird and like making lists

Edited July 18, 2016 by Needingdirection

[mom31257]

I really like this one, but this will be the first year I've used it with ds. I love that it is undated and has a section for the entire year's grades. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q4Z946G/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

As far as planning, I make my school calendar first to know which weeks I'll be doing school, when I'll take breaks, etc. 

 

Then I make a weekly plan for the entire year of what to accomplish in each subject. I use the school calendar to determine when I can do more or less school work. I print a spreadsheet with weeks down the side and subjects across the top, and I plan out how many weeks for each unit/chapter and such. 

 

After that, I make a weekly plan each weekend.

 

 

 

 

[Ravin]

I custom made mine last year. This year DD has a student planner and I'm sticking her stuff in folders on a wall instead of keeping a planner. Finished things I'll keep in a binder and that will amount to a record of what's done. Except math, we are using Math on the Level and it has its own planner/tracker built in.

[HeWillSoar]

Mine is very simple, something I tried last year and I'm repeating for this year.  It's a $5 nice looking book of plain lined paper.  In the front I have printed, pasted and trimmed with washi tape (and that's as fancy as it gets) the school schedule (we follow PS calendar since my oldest is in PS) and the attendance records.  Then I put the date on the top of each page and write out what we are doing.  It is nice to have a whole page to write out our day in instead of a little box.  I didn't mind all the writing because after we went through a cursive writing book, it was a nice way for me to practice.  The downside is if I plan too far out, I end up erasing a lot when things get switched.  But, normally I just plan as we go. 

 

The first year I did a binder with printable pages but being a lefty, I really hate those things.  I still have it to store all my paperwork in rarely does it get taken off the shelf. 

Edited July 18, 2016 by HeWillSoar

[3 ladybugs]

I recently made my own. Here is a video that I made of it. 

 

I made it primarily from http://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com I liked her style and her insisting that there is no such thing as a "perfect" homeschool planner. I am the type that I would constantly change things to fit us perfectly. By making this, I am taking that away for a year. I also included LOTS of room for notes. I want to be able to write down all observations so that I can keep my planner for years to come. A reminder of our year that isn't on the blog. 

 

If you decide to go this route, let me know. There are things I learned in the process of making it, that I would do differently in the future. 

[My3Munchkins]

I had planned to order Mardel's A Simple Plan homeschool planner, but unfortunately have discovered they are only available in stores and not online, and that they are discontinuing the planner. I don't live in a state with a Mardel store.

 

I've looked at Well Planned Day, but I'm just wondering, what do you all use for planning? Any options, online, cd-rom or paper are fine suggestions. I prefer a paper planner, but I will consider any style.

 

I'd also love to hear ideas on how you plan your year. I'm stuck in a rut and need some ideas! 

When will they be discontinuing the "A Simple Plan" homeschool planner?  I was able to order one online when the 2016-2017 planner first came out. However, I noticed that they're now only available in stores. Is this the last year for the planner? I was really hoping to find a planner that I like and stick with it instead of searching for a new style of planner each year!

[MerryAtHope]

I make my own planner (which you can see in my Teacher Binder blog post), and have several posts on planning that start with this one: Priorities and Passions.

 

Have fun!

[SkateLeft]

I use OneNote to gather and organize things, then I use Trello as my planner. I have a team set up in Trello for both of my boys, and they can see what they have to do, click links, add comments and attachments and mark things complete. Right now, my youngest son is working from his "Summer Work" board, my older son is finishing up the last few things on his 9th grade board, and I'm working on both the 10th grade and 5th grade boards for the fall.

 

OneNote has been my brain for YEARS, but I was never quite happy with its collaborative tools. Using Trello to manage daily work was perfect for us this past year.

[LauraBeth475]

I'm making my own, bullet journal style, this year. In the past I used Homeschool Planet and printouts from Donna Young.

[Prairie Dawn]

I laid out an overview for the year using this free printable planner (from here) while I wait for this $5 planner to arrive.

 

I divided our work into weekly chunks on the free planner to help me plan workload and gauge progress. I'll plan actual weeks as we go, since we always end up "ahead" in something and "behind" in something else, have to skip a subject one day, etc. So, a yearlong planned schedule would stress me out, but I need some kind of overview to see beyond the daily grind.

[homeschoolmama37]

When will they be discontinuing the "A Simple Plan" homeschool planner?  I was able to order one online when the 2016-2017 planner first came out. However, I noticed that they're now only available in stores. Is this the last year for the planner? I was really hoping to find a planner that I like and stick with it instead of searching for a new style of planner each year!

 

I honestly have no idea. I read someone else post that it was being discontinued....so...hearsay? However, like you, I had planned to order it earlier when it was released. Now, obviously I regret it because I can't order it.

 

 

I'm surprised at how many of you make your own planners!! I think a need a pro-click.  Is that an Amazon.com purchase? Or can I find that at my local office supply store?

[homeschoolmama37]

I'm making my own, bullet journal style, this year. In the past I used Homeschool Planet and printouts from Donna Young.

 

I LOVED Donna Young's website. Now it's all by pay. I completely understand why, but I just don't use it enough to justify a paid membership. Especially when the only thing I ever printed out were planning pages once or twice a year.

 

[Chelli]

I made a Facebook live video explaining my homemade planner. You can view it here: https://www.facebook.com/ThePlantedTrees/videos

 

You can see the pages of my planner here: https://www.facebook.com/ThePlantedTrees/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1058449287573732

 

ETA: You can see my actual planning process that I blogged about in my signature below.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Chelli

[blondchen]

I am mostly using Plan Your Year by Pam Barnhill. It is customizable and has many options for which forms you want to use, and it comes with a guide book to help you with the actual planning.

http://edsnapshots.com/plan-year-homeschool-planning-purpose-peace-2/

 

You can use her forms as fillable PDF's, or print them blank and write in the content. I do both, depending on the form. My planner is a combo of some of her forms and some I have made that are based on her ideas. I'm thankful for something I can tweak to suit my preferences, but which has a lot of the organizing work already done for me.

 

I have a weekly schedule overview printed out - no specifics - just which subjects are to be done in which block of time on each day. This won't change from week to week unless I decide something isn't working, in which case I'll edit it and print a new one. I also have a standard daily checklist for myself (with all the subjects for all children listed) and a daily checklist for each child to use. It's kind of like using the spiral notebooks method, but backwards - instead of writing out each subject and assignment from scratch for each child every day, I have all the subjects already listed and I cross off the ones that aren't assigned that day, and I fill in the blank next to each subject that is assigned, if necessary. Most of our curriculum is do-the-next-thing, so I don't need to plan way ahead for particular lessons on particular days or weeks. I just need to know approximately how many lessons per week we need to complete in order to keep the pace I want, and if we get behind, I'll need to make adjustments.

 

I used to keep those checklists in a week-at-a-glance format rather than daily, which worked pretty well, but I realized that the visual clutter is overwhelming for me and I do better with less info on one page.

 

One reason I generally can't use a pre-printed planner is that we school Tues-Sat, and most planners use a Mon-Fri format (and I can't just make the mental adjustment - it would drive me batty). Pam customized her Mon-Fri forms upon request so that I can fill in Tues-Sat instead. 

[J&JMom]

For the last three years, I buy 3 cheap-o $5 planners  Success Middle School. I give 2 to the kids (who never use them) and use the third myself.

My kids are color coded so I use frixion erasable pens to "pencil in' plans for a week or two and check off when complete or erase and move.  Longer term plans are put in notes. I have pages of post-its with lesson and project ideas to cover the front study aid materials.  I use the blank lists in the back for books read lists.  If I print out assignment lists, I'll just staple them into the week used.

My kids have been color coded since the beginning - youngest is Blue, oldest is red, but I use pink as grades are recorded in red. I use green (my color) for 'Joint' tasks for both boys. It might not be the neatest, but it works for me. 

Color Coded weekly spread.  'Pencil in" Erasable ink plans and check off as completed.  Blue - 6th grader, Pink - 8th Grader, Green - Joint tasks. Grades are in Red.  Moveable tab on top corner serves as a bookmark.

 

Repurposed 'Hall Pass" for book lists

Post It Note ideas plastered on study aid pages. 

[Clemsondana]

I'm amazed by these detailed planners! I choose curriculum in the spring or early summer for the following school year. During the summer I read what will be covered in each child's history and science for the year and break the topics into braoder units - normally, World geography and history, then physical sciences, then art history in the fall, biological sciences, US history, and music history/theory in the spring. It usually breaks down to around 2 months for each science or history unit and 2 weeks for each fine arts unit, with some extra time for interest-led time and field trips.

 

Then I look at what I've chosen for grammar, writing, etc, and decide how many days/week that each subject needs to be done. I have a pocket chart on the wall, and I make cards with the different subject names written on them. With the children, we decide how they want to distribute their cards - for a 3-day/week class, do they want M/T/W or M/W/F, etc? It's easy to change things if we want to, but each day they go and get their cards, and then work through their subjects, moving the cards to a 'done' pocket when they finish. They usually do one lesson in each subject per day - one math exercise, one children's book or history chapter, as appropriate. Once they finishe, I write in their student planner so I have a recored of what they did (I like the ones by Aspire, but I don't think it matters).

 

Sometimes they decide to double up and do 2 of a type of lesson on Monday so that they can skip Friday. For subjects that are finished when the workbook is finished, they will sometimes double up when they have extra time so that the end of the semester has lots of time for free reading without worrying about spelling or grammar. I usually try to have a stack of appropriate books to choose from during unit study time - since they are still in elemntary school, there is a lot of flexibility. I think that, for us, using subject cards instead of lists of assignments makes us feel less tied-down, even though we actually do what I would have written most days. But, my kids like being able to sometimes move cards around, deciding to do 2 spelling exercises one day and then 2 handwriting the next.

[Insertcreativenamehere]

I use 3 student planners for my 3 kids and one teacher planner for myself.

 

In the student planner, I list out their assignments by subject each week. They check them off when completed. This is only for their independent subjects. Some subjects are covered every day, like math, while others are only two or three days a week. This doesn't generally change from week to week, although I may move First Language Lessons, for example, to a different day if we have a field trip or other activity. 

 

In the teacher planner, I list out the subjects we cover together (history, Latin, science, fine arts, recitation, read-aloud) and check off that work when completed.

 

I used to use Homeschool Planner and then Lessontrek, but this has turned out to be the easiest system for us. I needed something where they each had their own to-do list because they each go to their grandma's to do school once a week so I can give more focused attention to the others. It also gives them some accountability to get their work done and satisfaction when they get to check something off!

Edited October 30, 2016 by poikar

[kolamum]

I've been using the Plum Paper Teacher Planner which is lovely. Very simple, little waste in regards to converting a teacher planner into a homeschool planner. There's one section {My Class} that isn't super useful, but you can ask them to leave it off. You can add extra note pages or whatever to your planner & have it spiral bound or ask for it to be unbound so you can hole punch it in another way. I've really enjoyed the planner. They now offer a Large family planner so I ordered that during a sale a couple of months back to use next year.

The difference between the Family Planner {called ME} vs the Teacher Planner aren't that huge. The ME has Sunday - Saturday with boxes you can plan/schedule things. Where as the Teacher planner has Mon-Fri as full boxes & tiny boxes for Sat & Sun. There'd be no My Class section in the Family planner.. :)  You can see samples of both on their website if you're interested.

 

As for how we plan.. I sit down on Friday afternoon & jot down what's happening in the week ahead for school. Sometimes it's detailed, sometimes it's not. The kids have their own planners, so often I don't need super detailed things, just a quick note like Wk 3 D4 to have a record of what we did when. :) 

[73349]

I use a spreadsheet (see link in signature; feel free to click on different tabs) and plan far ahead, but by the week, not the day. I blogged about it here.

[AdventuresinHomeschooling]

You can buy individual sheets by Donna Young for a small fee. I actually did that for her attendance calendar this year because I could not find another I liked as much. I put together my own. No printed ones have everything I need the way I need it. I use the Donna Young six week planners per subject and then plan my week as I go in a weekly calendar.

[Spryte]

This is an old thread, but I haven't seen scholaric.com mentioned.  I love scholaric.  It's online.  Once we get all of our materials in, or even through the year as I add more or change things, I just enter it in.  It's easy to change the schedule or bump things forward or backward as our schedule changes.  There's a print option to print out a list of "to dos" for each student daily - DS gets his list off the printer each morning and checks off the boxes as we go.  

 

I've tried paper planners, and I have a tendency to let them fall by the wayside sometime in Feb.  Oops.   :leaving: 

 

Scholaric has passed the test of many years.  

 

Oh, and this year - 7th grade - is our first year using the grade function.  I never kept track of grades until this year.  It's easy peasy, too.