Are you looking for the best homeschool planner?

The best homeschool planner can feel like unicorn, but you can find your best solution. Don’t want to read it, you can listen to my podcast on planning or continue to read the post below.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about planning. When you think about planning your year, your week, your day, however you plan you need think about what your strategy is going to be. The best homeschool planner really depends on how you approach homeschooling and planning the rest of your life. It will probably change as you move through different stages of homeschooling. I know my strategy has changed multiple times, but I’m digging what I’m doing now so I’m going to share kind of my own evolution and what your options are for planning.

There are 5 basic types of homeschool planning

Using the Curriculum Outline/Lessons
Paper Planning
Digital Planning
Hybrid Planning
Not Planning

When you look at planning, basically you can either use curriculum outline. What I mean is you use a scripted lesson that has it all laid out for you. You don’t write anything else down, you open up your curriculum and you go to the next page. I’ve definitely done that type of planning.

I’ve shown you my paper planner on Instagram before and I’ll show it to you later as well, digital planning.

I have two digital planners I mentioned on my last live that I would definitely suggest you use. Either one of those and they both have free trials. If you’re interested in digital planning and using an app for digital planning versus just using like a Good Notes on Apple devices.

Hybrid planning, which is really what I do, my day to day planning is done digitally. However, I use a paper planner for like a weekly overview and I actually use my paper planner as a daily assessment. This helps me keep up with what’s working and what’s not.

The last option is not planning at all, but not planning at all isn’t really what you think it is.

Using Your Curriculum

Using the curriculum outline is basically opening the page and going to the next page in your curriculum. Your curriculum might have even a schedule with it.

The pros are that it requires no work in advance for you. You just open it and do the next thing. This can be the best homeschool planner for families just starting out. You don’t have a big obstacle to climb (like planning an entire year) in order to get started.

The cons are (as someone that’s done this a lot, I can speak to this probably more than maybe some people who didn’t do it this way) it isn’t always time efficient. If you choose to open and it can slow you down because (especially when you use manipulative intensive curriculum or if you’re using science which can make experiment heavy hands on heavy curriculum) it can take a while to pull everything out.

You open it and see you need seven things for today’s lesson. Hold on. You lose their attention. By the time you pull everything and have it ready the kids are doing something else.

The other con is that kids don’t always know what to expect next. For a lot of kids, that’s not a big deal, but if you have a very type A student, it can be really frustrating for them to not know how their week’s going to be laid out or what to expect.

Paper Planning – Traditional Homeschool Planner

This is my paper planner this year. I include things like my meal plan for the week, weekly overview for our school week, the month, those kinds of things.

The pros to paper planning are you can add additional information. Like I just mentioned, you can really customize it. Your appointments for the week can easily go in and things like that. You can also have any of the record keeping that you might need to stay legal in your state, log-ins (thanks virtual learning), and household tasks. There’s lots of things you can add to make paper planning your own.

You can make copies for everyone. So once you have your plan for the week or the month, or however you do it, you can literally go onto your printer or copier and make a copy for everyone. You could also scan it and email it.

You could also make it pretty and add stickers and washi tape and all those things. That’s not who I am as a person, but a lot of people are and they like to make their planner pretty (almost like a scrapbook). If you’re one of those people, you can absolutely do that with the paper planner.

If you hate being tied to a screen…

You aren’t relying on a screen to dictate the day. So if you’re very anti screen, a paper planner is great because you’re just pulling out a workbook or a piece of paper that is your planner. And that’s how you’re going through your day. Your kiddos are not constantly seeing you check a device to see what you’re doing next. So you’re reinforcing the idea that we don’t need to be attached so much to our devices and paper.

The last one is really big if you’re laying out your curriculum. Especially if you’re not following the included schedule and you’re not someone that just goes to the next lesson, paper gives you a place to record all your brainstorming. If you do interest led or direction or delight, directed learning, that’s a great place to do it. You could keep a list of games in the back and what they’re related to and how they could perhaps spark some interest in things.

Paper gives just a lot of flexibility for that kind of stuff.

The Cons of Paper Planning

There are also cons for paper planning. You can’t share them easily. They can grow too large and wind up being put in a corner. It can be time consuming, especially if you need to make adjustments.

If you are a big picture planner and someone gets hurt or someone gets sick or there’s an unexpected visitor, or there’s an unexpected trip, or there’s an unexpected pandemic ? those things can throw you off schedule. You will need to make adjustments. Your kids are going to need three days on a lesson that you thought they would need one day on. That is just the way it works. If you don’t like to scratch out stuff, I really don’t suggest daily paper planning.

Digital – Homeschool Planning Online

This is the first year we’ve used a digital planning site other than Google calendar. I did the free trials for both Homeschool Planet and Homeschool Panda. They both have a 30 day free trial so I suggest you check out both to see which will work for you best.

I decided to go with Homeschool Panda this year because we aren’t using a lot of traditional homeschool curricula, I like the interface for Homeschool Panda, and it has an app. If we used more traditional curriculum, I would probably have chosen Homeschool Planet to take advantage or their easy to load lesson plans (that are an additional cost).

Basic Overview of Digital Planning

I had my first grader’s first semester planned in about 45 minutes. That was with me tinkering around on Amazon, looking through boxes, and learning how to use the app properly. My favorite thing about homeschool planning online is the flexibility.

If we don’t get something done, I can go in and readjust and just push it back three or four days or whatever the time period may be. I am a little in love with this feature. It’s like when you find that perfect lipstick and you just want to buy them all up, that’s kind of how I feel about this. So I’m super excited about the ease of planning and record keeping this year.

You can divide up your curriculum by lessons, you can do it by pages or by chapters. I used Homeschool Panda to plan out my high school biology class. If you are in a state that has really strict record keeping guidelines, because they’re going through and hitting complete, you get almost a portfolio. Just need to add a few things for your compliance of what they’ve done. I will be talking more about each type in a separate post.

Pros of Homeschool Planning Online

easy
adjustable
flexible planning options
easy record keeping
easy to share

Cons of Homeschool Planning Online

requires electronics to share easily (share login or print)
limited customization
annual investment

Hybrid Homeschool Planning

We are hybrid planners. This means I’m combining methods this year. I’m using paper for weekly, monthly, and yearly overviews. Our daily lesson plans are gonna be in a digital planner. This feels like the best homeschool planner option for us (at least for this year).

The pros to this approach are you can customize and do what you want with it. The downside is you’re really keeping up with two planners. I like it cause I feel like I get the best of both worlds. The other con is that this is double the cost cause you’re paying for a digital and a paper planner. At this point in my personal game, it’s worth it for me to spend a little extra money for us to be organized.

Not Planning

The last option is not planning. A lot of people don’t use a formal curriculum and choose to follow their kiddo’s interests. There are definitely all forms of not planning people across the spectrum that are getting a lot of learning done. This is not a judgment call on my point, but there are pros and cons to each one.

The pros are really more about mindset and approach. This is definitely a best for parents that don’t use a formal curriculum. These parents would probably define their approach as delight directed, interest led or an unschool approach. These parents don’t want to plan too much in advance because they want to structure their studies around their children’s evolving interests.

The cons of not planning are really more about personality type as well. It’s not great for your students that like to know what to expect. It’s not ideal for people that need lots of records in order to feel fulfill their state’s requirements. I find planning ahead of time makes the record keeping easier. It is easy to evaluate if you did or didn’t do something at the end of the school year. Although some people that do portfolio evaluations just record everything after the fact.

The Wrap Up

How you approach homeschool planning will be just like every other area of homeschooling – unique to your own approach. The best homeschool planner is the one you will use and that helps you make homeschooling doable for your family. You will make it as customized as you need it for your family. You might find that each kid needs a little something different and you have to tweak it for them. If the planning piece is holding you back try different things to see what works best.