FREE Simple Homeschool Planner

Back to school!

Many homeschoolers are gearing up for their first day of school.  I know we are.  I ordered all our curricula, and the boys peek out the windows at mail delivery time each day, eager to see if another book is arriving.  As soon as all our books arrive, we'll be ready to start.  Well, almost.

We need a plan!  Lesson plan, that is.  You can find dozens of planners made for homeschoolers.  They're popular among bloggers.  Filled with not only calendars, but also grocery lists, contact lists, meal plans, goals - like the one found here on a blog named Living Well Spending Less.  Appointment keepers, journal pages, attendance trackers, reading logs, and more, like you'll find in this in-depth, customizable planner (which is what I used last year) at Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus.

But, I don't need all that.  I use Outlook to keep track of appointments and contacts.  I use Homeschool Tracker Plus to track attendance, keep reading logs, and more.  And I use good old fashioned pen and paper for meal planning, grocery lists, and journaling.  

What I need is a simple calendar system.  A calendar for the full school year for each subject, where I can write in lesson plans for each day.

That's it.  Simple.

So I went looking for one.  I took to Google, Facebook, Amazon...  No luck.  Everything I found either had what I wanted, but with lots of other things attached, or only had something that was close to what I wanted, but not quite.

I decided to make my own.  Exactly what I want.  And, why not share it?  I figure someone out there is looking for just this type of planner, too.

Here's how it works:  

All pages are in PDF form, in hopes that the font I chose will remain intact whether you have it installed on your computer or not.  But, if it doesn't, I'm also including the ZIP file of the font that you can download, if you want.  Everything will work fine without it, though.

First, the cover page, which you can see in this image. 

Next, a full academic year (July 1st through June 30th) calendar page.  Here you can mark off planned days off, vacations, and holidays.  It's a year in review page.

Finally, monthly pages by subject, which is where you will fill in your lesson plans for each day.  One month per page.  When you print these, you can choose to either print them back to back (aka, duplex printing), or you can just print one month per page, which is what I prefer, so that when the pages are bound, the binding is always on the left side of the page I'm using.  

The subjects are color coded, but, to save on ink, you can print them monochrome.  Also, you'll notice there are only 5 days per week on the monthly pages.  They are Monday through Friday weeks.  I know, many of us school on the weekends, too, but I found the 5 day week planner to be most efficient for me.

After all pages are printed,  match up the month of July 2014 pages for each subject (putting them in whatever order you like), then match up August, and place them behind July, then September, and so on.

The subjects included in this planner are Math, English, History, Science, Health, and Bible.  There's also a calendar with no subject heading, which you can print as many times as you like to use for any other subjects you need a planner for.  Also, each subject's calendar is a separate file, so if you aren't teaching Health, for example, you can skip printing those pages.

The simplest way to bind your pages is with a 3-hole punch and a 3-ring binder.  You'll need a 1" to 1 1/2" binder.  I prefer the ones with the clear plastic cover where you can slide your cover page in the top opening.

Done!  Now you can start planning your days. 

For a first effort, I'm pretty happy with this planner.  For next year, I'll probably play with the design to make it more visually appealing.  This year, I went more for practicality. 

Let me know if you like this, if my instructions were clear, and if you have any suggestions.  Also, feel free to share the link with your homeschooling friends.  But, please, be sure to give credit where credit is due.  The link below will take you to Google Drive, where you can view and print the planner. 


Free Simple Homeschool Planner