4 Quick & Simple Ways To Plan Your Homeschool Week, Free Template Included

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Without my purple clipboard, I’d be lost. It’s one of those clipboards that doubles as a folder and I keep all our homeschool plans inside.  It’s my roadmap to our homeschool week and without it we are toast!  It’s one of the planning tools I use to keep our homeschool trucking along.  

Look at the Big Picture

I start planning for next year before we finish the previous year.  As we wind down the year I am thinking about what they each need to work on next.  Sometimes what they need is the next grade level material, but sometimes it’s not.  I also look at what we want to study as a family during morning time. 

Right now we are loving Sonlight which has a clear sequence for our morning time.  I have found that our family likes to read more during morning time than the provided lesson plans suggest.  So we follow the reading plan at our own pace.  While we don’t follow them exactly I like the comfort and outline they provide for my weekly planning sheet.

Curriculum and Lesson plans are wonderful but I have found my kids learn best when we let ourselves deviate from the plan.  Sometimes that’s pulling the math blocks out at lunch to compare numbers or adding a book to morning time to answer a question from breakfast about the changing weather.

Plan Your Homeschool Week

I have tried different kinds of planners to keep our school day organized over the years.  I have settled on an Excel spreadsheet, which is the easiest homeschool planning sheet for me.  I can customize it to our needs adding and subtracting lines each week if I need to and it keeps everyone’s work all on one page.  It’s also easy to change as we adjust future assignments based on what gets done this week.

My homeschool planning page is divided into different sections for our Morning Time (together subjects) and each child’s independent work.  Since I have 3 students, that means there are 4 sections on the page.  While I assign work to each day of our morning time, we often rearrange it, and I’m happy as long as it’s all crossed off at the end of the week.  It gives us some space to be flexible and also stay on track.

Last year I discovered planning in 6 week terms.  Instead of weekly planning Sunday night for the week ahead, I plan 4 to 6 weeks out at a time.  On Sunday nights I still make small adjustments as needed.  Having a few weeks of school to focus on without stopping to plan gives momentum to our homeschool routine.

I created my own science plans last year and planned a different science unit for each term.  I plan a lazy week between terms where I use the time to plan the following term and we keep doing the things that can’t take a break, like co-op or a reading book.  I find I’m ready to change up the routine after about 4 weeks anyway so it’s a WIN!

Include Fun in Your Homeschool Planning

I make detailed plans for our school because if it’s not on the schedule, it doesn’t get done.  So I make sure I plan some fun.  One way I do this is by having a different routine on Friday.  I make sure this day is lighter in bookwork so we can plan fun trips to nature parks, and museums, or just playdates with friends. 

Friday is our catch-up day for the week, if we have an outing early in the week we do the work we “missed” on Friday.   We did an Art Activity book last year once a week which was a lot of fun, low stress, and no prep for mom.  It turned out to be a weekly highlight for all of us.  This year I will be including another activity book in our Friday schedule.

Make the Homeschool Planning Sheet work for you

Hopefully hearing my weekly planning method helps you discover a method that works for you.  It took me a few years to figure out how I wanted to stay organized.  I’m curious what works for you.  Are you a paper and pencil or digital planner?  Do you wing it or assign every worksheet and page number?  What little tricks have you discovered to help your plan?