Today is one of my favorite posts because it combines some of my favorite things… planners, homeschool, and organization! I’ve been wanting to do this post for quite some time, but I had to get it just right before I did. To be honest, I LOVE when homeschoolers will post their plans and planners for me to see, but I also would get overwhelmed. How do they do so much in a day? How do they plan for all those little nuts and bolts of the big plan? I didn’t see their whole process, but I decided to just do what I could and take it one bite-size piece at a time. As I watched their YouTube video (nerd alert!), I would jot down a list of all of the components in their planners. Then, I would cross off the ones I didn’t need in mine, and add things that I did want to add and include. Little by little, I began working on a plan for each of those things whether it was a divider section or a pocket or a way to keep up with our attendance… and I found what works for me. I’m pretty happy with the results. Sometimes I add some stickers and a little washi here and there, but for the most part I really don’t. It’s more about function and use for me, so it’s mostly just pen and pencil and highlighters. I purchased a Teacher Planner that’s already pretty cute on it’s own so I don’t feel the need to spend time decorating it too.
I love keeping it all together in this cover. It gives me extra pockets and a place to keep my pen or highlighter handy. It’s the perfect place for this sticker pack. The planner is this one. Last year, I used a regular classic-sized vertical Happy Planner, and it worked just fine, but I really love ALL THE SECTIONS that the teacher planner gives me.
**It looks like the Teacher Planner I have is out of stock on the Mambi website. Be sure to check Michael’s if you’re looking to get it, or check out the other available options in teacher’s planners. If you purchase from Michael’s, be sure to use their coupon if they aren’t already on sale the week you go.
I like to start out the year with a “Back to School Survey”. I’ve done this for about three years, and it really is fun to look back and see their answers from previous years. I made my own, and we use the same one every year to keep it simple.
I also keep this “Plan your Year” calendar in the front where I planned out all of our terms for the year and planned breaks. You can learn more about our yearly planning and schedule in this post.
Finally, here you can see my tabbed dividers… I have a section for our Memory Work, Knight Training, Reading, Planning/Scheduling, and Bible Roadtrip. I’ll share some samples from each of those sections.
In our Reading section, I have printed a First Grade Reading List for Lawson so we can use this list as we choose books at the library each week and highlight them as we go. I also have a Read Aloud Revival Booklist. It’s 10 pages of different types of the best read alouds…. everything from Audio Books to Board Books, to Stories for Large Families. It’s got it all. I’ll also need to add a “Reading Log” to this section, but I’ll probably just do that with a simple notes page to keep it simple.
In our Memory Work section, we have Linkin’s Raising Rockstars Preschool Memory Verses. I realize the page says “Kindergarten” but that’s because the verses are the same for both years, so next year will be a review for him. I like this page because we can easily see all the verses at once to review when we need to.
We also have our Catechisms in here. I love these, and I’ve already seen how they can apply the things they’ve learned from just by memorizing them. They really like the question and answer flow when we do these.
I’ve also included some other Memory Work samples for you to see. I like to have it at a glance for me so I’ll know what to review and introduce to them. I put previously learned things in here as well to review periodically. We’ve got scriptures, poetry, manners, safety rules, mottos, and skills like skip counting in this section.
In our Knight Training section, we’ve got our Knight’s Code of Chivalry that we’re working through. We do one per week and discuss it from notes I took when I read the book. I’ve included some of my notes from the introduction of the book here to give you some ideas. I just love this for my boys!
In the Planning/Scheduling section, I’ve got our current “Term Plans”. I make a simple six-week plan for us based on how far we got in our previous term and how far I think we need to get in this term. It just helps us to stay on track and pace ourselves. If you were to compare this term with last term, you would see that I’ve slowed down some things we do like doing only one verse per week of our Psalms Memory Work and taking two weeks to cover our Bible Roadtrip lessons. This is much more doable for us, but we’re still making great progress.
Also, in this section I have “Just Because We Can” Days List… which gives us some ideas of some things we can do, really whenever we want to, and just because. I’ve also added some pages for ideas as they come to me in the form of Movie Mondays, Tasty Tuesdays, What’s New Wednesdays, Thoughtful Thursdays, and Fun Fridays. I like the idea of assigning various “extra” fun things to certain days, Otherwise, they may never happen. I also have some lists for Service Days, Playdates, and Fieldtrips in this section so that we can keep track.
In our Bible Roadtrip section, I keep our lesson plans for the current term. I’ve included a full week for you here so you can get a little idea of what the curriculum is like. If you have older children, you would just add in those sections that would build on the others, but of course, I had no need for them so I didn’t include them in my planner.
I just love the cute dashboards and dividers in the Happy Planners, especially the “teacher-themed” ones this one has. You can see how I use the monthly spread page to keep up with our attendance, and I add in any reminders such as our weekly Memory Work review and monthly things to go over as well.
I included my August lesson plans for you to see. I mostly write in our plans “after the fact” instead of making a plan before hand. Honestly, as much as I love to plan, I’m not really that great at carrying out really detailed plans so this works for me. I do kind of plan the week at a time for things like language, math, and Bible roadtrip. I write in the workbook or lesson plans a simple letter (M,T,W,R,or F) so I’ll know if I can fit it all in. Then, I’ll add it to my planner as we complete it to keep track.
Of course, one of our weeks this month was our “Break Week” so I included that and added in some fun field trips we wanted to take (or did take), as well as some tasks I wanted to complete during the week. The final week I included is the first week of our Fall Term because the format looks a little different. I changed up the titles of the boxes. I left off our Summer Reading Program and included our Langage Arts curriciculum. You’ll also notice that I added in a “coupon”. These were a printable that I laminated and gave to Lawson a few years ago in his stocking at Christmas as a little treat. There are lots of different ideas included, and we grabbed a few of them randomly last year. I decided this year that I would punch them and add them to my planner. It helps us to “plan ahead” and actually do them this way… We can’t bake cookies if we don’t have all the ingredients. So now we are prepared.
The teacher planner has a section for checklists, which I am currently not using. I’m not sure how I could use them in our homeschool, but maybe I’ll think of something. Instead, I’ve just used this section to keep our developmental evaluations and goal-sheets for each of my “students”. 😉
And that’s it for this school year’s Homeschool Teacher Planner! Let me know if you have any questions I can answer for you.
My Purposeful Planning 