Blank Homeschool Planners

I'm spending part of my summer planning for next year. I've finally learned that we really do best when I have a specific concrete and finite schedule for us to follow. For some reason, just have a specific to do list will get my kids (or at least some of them) to plug away from one subject to another. When I try to be more free form, we tend to drift more than I'm comfortable with.

So I'm working on consolidating our various school lists and schedules into something that can give us more of an overview of what we are doing, not just for the day, but for a semester.

If this is something that you're working on, you might want to check out the Donna Young website. She has a number of planners and calendars that are blank and printable. She even has a section that helps you think through the homeschool planning process, from deciding what subjects to cover to scheduling them out. This can be pretty helpful if you've recently taken the plunge into homeschooling or if you find you are making the transition from elementary days with a focus on reading and early math to something more structured. Or if you have older kids, who like mine, haven't mastered the art of keeping a calendar and planning ahead, you might want to check out the high school subject notebook

This isn't to say that you need to have your day planned out in 15 minute blocks. We went for years with our whole schedule being a half page of paper with subjects listed and blocks to check. We just did whatever was the next lesson in each subject. But the more that I merge and tweak curriculum or create my own, the handier it is for me to have an overview of what I'm trying to do. My hope is that by working consistently through what I think we Need to do, I will have more free time in which to do what I Want to do without feeling that I'm neglecting something.

As with anything in homeschooling, your mileage may vary.