I’m a recovering major overcomplicat-or, so through the years, I committed to finding ways to keep our homeschool planning simple, little by little. And today on the blog, I’m sharing five ways to keep homeschool planning simple for you too. I’ll also be sharing what my current homeschool planning method looks like as well if you’d like to read about that too.

A picture of my son's planning homeschool binder.

4 ways to simplify your homeschool planning

  1. Take time to yearly plan (linking a homeschooling friend’s site on yearly planning in depth). This will look different for every homeschooling family, but some a few basic planning steps to take are:
    • to brainstorm ideas
    • write down some goals and subjects you’d like to cover
    • field trips you’d like to take
    • resources you’d like to use

    Even when things change up, coming back to that general homeschool yearly plan can help with more focus and direction throughout the year.

  2. Write things down. This one goes without saying, but really, I know for myself that I can have the most amazing plans and ideas, but if I don’t write them down? I forget about them completely! Anything that comes to mind or anything that you are planning. If you’d like to simplify your homeschool planning, writing it down will help so much. Here are some more benefits for writing things down.
  3. Weekly planning. At the end of the week, take some time to set your next week up. What will you do? Where will you go? What supplies do you need? Preplanning helps to simplify your homeschool planning. Here is a blog more on weekly homeschool planning.
  4. Daily planning. As with weekly planning, taking time the night before or the morning of and writing down the most important tasks will help simplify your homeschool.
What am I doing currently for simple homeschool planning?

All of the above, plus a break every six weeks to reassess our homeschooling plans and making any tweaks that need tweaking. For weekly planning, for us, it’s mostly me writing out all of the weekly assignments in my children’s catchall binder. They cross off the tasks as they complete them through the week. This is one strategy that I use to keep homeschool planning simple here. I have four children ages ten to two, so simple is a must or my brain explodes. ha!

See my reel on what this looks like…

FREEBIE: 10 questions to help you simplify your homeschool life

If you are looking to simplify your homeschool life, you may enjoy the freebie I created for the Simplifying Your Homeschool Life session I gave for the Online Canadian Homeschool Conference (find the session here ). I’m happy to send you the “10 questions to help simplify your homeschool life” freebie to help you out too. Just click here and drop your email to access that. Enjoy!

A woman planning in her planner.

*Credit goes to Sarah Mackenzie years back in the beginning of my homeschooling journey for the one page list. I read a blog on of hers here on using spiral notebooks to simplify her homeschool and it’s stuck all these years.

Other blogs of mine you may enjoy:

Hi, I’m Kelly! I’m a mother of four children - three boys, one toddler girl - and our family lives on the beautiful east coast of Canada. I’m a past elementary teacher, turned stay at home, work at home mom eight years ago after I had my second child. I’ve found that the busier I’ve become and as my children age, that it’s become even more important to figure out what is most important to me and us as a family. Living a simpler lifestyle has helped us in so many ways in our home life - from better routines to faster tidying up times. It has been through my children that I have been inspired to learn how to effectively manage my time and to simplify in all areas of my home and life. I enjoy helping busy moms simplify home life by teaching flexible planning methods and skills. Enjoyed this blog and think it would be helpful to others? I'd love if you shared it. Thank you!