Homeschool Weekly Planner

About the Homeschool Weekly Planner

A weekly Planner will resemble just about any type of homeschool or teacher planner that you can buy at stores. A weekly planner is also the most common type of planner in use. Depending on how you use it, the weekly planner can be the best choice or it can be frustrating.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• All subjects are laid out on the same page or two.

Cons

• When a lesson is not completed, that affects all of the planner pages that you have filled in with lesson plans. Bring on the liquid paper. I had to cover up lesson plans during my weekly planner years because I tended to plan at least 6 weeks in advance. I preferred to plan in advance and that is probably what led me to making subject planners so that I could make lesson plans for the entire school year.

Solution 1 to the missed lesson: Make all of your lesson plans subject planners and use those to fill in the weekly planner on a weekly basis, more or less. [ this was the best solution for me]
See: Transfer Plans from Subject Form to Weekly Form

Solution 2 to the missed lesson: Do not fill in more than 1 or 2 weeks worth of plans and in that way, only those 1 or 2 weeks will be affected.

Solution 3 to the missed lesson: Use a daily planner

Electronic Solution to the missed lesson: Use Donna Young's V Planner - Requires a spreadsheet program. Currently only in XLS format and only available on Donna's Site CD, YoungMinds

What Planner Forms to Use in a Homeschool Weekly Planner

Several forms from the Essential Homeschool Forms list in this order:

1. Title Page (optional)
2. Calendar
3. Events Calendar (optional, but this form is handy)
4. Attendance (optional, but essential for some states)
5. Course of Study
6. Goals
7. Book List Forms
8. Curriculum Key (essential for weekly)
9. Six weeks of weekly planner forms
10. An Objectives form (optional, but I found these necessary to keep on top of my children's trouble spots when they were younger)
11. Repeat 9 and 10 until you have enough weeks. (typical school year is 36 weeks, your year may vary)
12. Subject planners (yes, these are essential, more about that in How to Use)
13. Grades Forms (optional, but essential for some states)
14. A few Journal Forms (optional unless you like to make notes of things)
15. Any household forms that you want to include (optional) After all, if household chores are not planned and if those plans are not in a place that you will see, then chore might go undone. If it helps, print one of my big notebook block calendars that has one page per month or two pages per month and pencil in appointments, chores, and important dates. Also consider making yourself sit down and write a month's worth of lunch menus. Reuse the menu throughout the year.

 

How to Use a Homeschool Weekly Planner without much Frustration

Please keep these tips in mind when you use your weekly planner.

1. Plan on subject planners first and be sure to place the subject planners in your planner.
2. Fill in the weekly planner either a week in advance, the day before, or on the very day your children do the work. The plans come from your completed subject planners! In this way, you will avoid having to make the white-out people richer.
3. Be diligent, mark work completed and if there is a grade, add the grade to the block or grade planner on the very day it is done. Please don't spend your weekends grading papers! Exception to this would be grading complex work such as a research paper. Make use of my grading tools if you have a spreadsheet program.