Day 15: The Homeschool Planner

The beauty of homeschooling is that it looks different in every family. Within one family, one year does not always look like the previous year either. We kind of go with the flow.....

.... or in my case, homeschooling has taught me to be flexible. I used to be very organized, but then we started this amazing adventure and we had three kids, and my organization went out the window.

So I never used a schedule before, we kind of always followed our books from beginning to end. At least for the main subjects like Math, Reading, or Grammar. Then we added the fun things whenever there was a good day to do so, like the baby taking a long nap or us staying home most of the day and having more free time than on park days, or field trip days. We just flowed with the flow.... lol.

This year, I kind of felt that we needed more structure. Two kids in school with one preschooler running around, I needed to know what was done and what was missing. So I looked online, found a few free printable pages and printed away. I started filling them out and found it very tedious. But I determined not to spend money on a planner.

Until a friend mentioned this great app. First I thought, I don't need another app. After all, we get bombarded with those 'need-to-have' apps, right? Well, something convinced me to have a look..... and that look turned into a purchase..... and that turned into a lifesaver. The app is called Homeschool Helper. It is fantastic.


I am in love with this app and how it has helped us to stay on top of what needs to be done. And if we fail one day, it is easy to 'bump' the lesson to the next day. I keep a record of all the grades, of the attendance, of the field trips, and of so much more. You can back this up, too, so you can print it later for reference. It is awesome.

Here a picture of Coqui's calendar for the month. Red means the day is not done, green means all the work scheduled for that day is done and school is over. The red car stands for field trips. 

The kids use this every single day. It teaches them independence. They are in charge of the order in which they want to accomplish their learning. I am here to guide them..
This worked even better when I went on vacation and Grandma watched the kids for a week. The lessons were already in the app, I just added some important to-do things, and they were able to finish all their work with Grandma just delegating them. Those five bucks were very well invested.