Homeschool: Weekly Planner Spreadsheet

CLICK HERE to view the planner sheet

For those of you needing a little help with organizing your homeschool week, I came up with a silly little spreadsheet. 

This is just the basics.  Some weeks we do WAY more than this, other weeks we get just this done and not an ounce more.  I feel pretty strongly that children learn well when they aren’t in a stressed environment.  We try to keep things calm and not get too worked up over assignments that didn’t get done before daddy came home from work.  We find time after supper or on the weekend to be sure everything was accomplished that needed to be.

When things don't get done because of attitude, lack of effort, or that sort of thing, they end up doing double the next day (the assignments they missed, plus the ones that were already scheduled).  No one likes this, so usually their work gets done on time.  Sometimes we miss work because we have company over, or we were out of the house.  For those times we just do what we can with the hours that are left in the day and move on.

You can look at THIS POST to see what we are using for curriculum.  I love that with most of our subjects once we finish a page or a lesson we just go on to the next one.  Almost everything we do is in order.  It’s easy to stick a bookmark where we left off and pick it up again the next day. 

This sample week is a pretty simple one. We have the 100^th day of school and Valentine’s Day this week.  I used Pinterest to find & print activities for each of those days. 

My 5^th grader LOVES writing in cursive.  I found some Advent handwriting pages online, so she is working through those.  Before you go to check the date of this post and lose your place, yes it is February.  December was just too busy to remember to set worksheets in her handwriting drawer.  Okay it wasn’t THAT busy, but it was busy.  With these sheets I love that she’s not only working on her handwriting, but also learning Bible verses at the same time!  When she’s not doing these she works in her Handwriting Without Tears book and enjoys that too. 

The Kindergartner loves to learn and picks up more than you’d think.  The problem is he has a stereotypical male attention span (did I just say that?  yeah, the truth hurts, huh?)  So we do school in “chunks”.  When one subject is done he needs a break to eat something, drink something, or go to the bathroom. Sometimes he just needs a break to lie on the floor for a few minutes.  I just go with it and call him back when I think he’s ready again. 

If you notice that the kids have some of the same assignments.  Even though they are the same I have different expectations for each of them, based on their level of skill and ability. 

This works for us. Maybe it’ll work for you, maybe not.  If you need something to keep you on track try it out.  If it doesn’t work, just ditch it and try something new. 

If you are curious, the prompts for their Thankful Journals came from Ann Voskamp's Joy Dare Challenge.  Some days I use what she suggests, other days I pull from the previous month and use one we haven't done yet.