Homeschool Mom Life Hack: I don’t lesson plan (and you shouldn’t either)

I don’t lesson plan as a homeschool mom – and you shouldn’t either! Seriously, if you want to simplify your homeschooling and ditch the overwhelm, then you should also ditch the bulky teacher’s manuals and try this simple plan.

Do you feel overwhelmed and stressed out when you see pictures on Pinterest of big organization files or planner books for homeschool moms?  I do too!

Because the fact is (even though I’m a former classroom teacher), I don’t lesson plan, and you shouldn’t either.

There, I said it.

Probably a bit controversial in homeschool circles.  But why on earth should mom invest hours upon hours of time to meticulously write down daily plans and create folders of material for each day in the year? Sounds like you might be working harder than the kids.  And that’s a problem.  (See Secret #2 here).

If you feel energized by organizing in this way and creating amazing lesson plans, then please continue! This post is not for you.

This post is for the rest of us who don’t need more expectations on our shoulders.  Here is permission (not that you need it) to enjoy homeschooling, enjoy your kids, and throw that big filing crate and teacher planner away.

My posts contains affiliate links.

So, if you’re not supposed to lesson plan, how do you know what to do each year?  Each month?  Each day?

Glad you asked 🙂

Enter the flexible and eclectic homeschool planning groove.

HWM 260: Homeschool Mom Hack – Don’t Lesson Plan

Extensive lesson planning might be one of the ways you’re making homeschooling harder than it needs to be! Let’s rethink lesson planning. 

Here’s episode 260 of the Homeschool with Moxie Podcast.

How to Make Homeschool Yearly Plans

Once a year, schedule time to consult your goals, your state requirements, the upcoming grade levels of your kids, and your family’s priorities.  Then create a yearly plan, which will include the subjects you want each child to cover.

These days, I only have a few kids left at home and since 2 out of 3 are in high school, we’re not doing many subjects together anymore.

But take a look at my life a decade ago with four kids in 5th grade and under! Here’s my not-so-beautiful yearly plan all scratched out on a one-page overview so I could see the big picture. Notice the top includes all the subjects we covered together. Then, the individual subjects that are based on skill level (math, language arts) are mapped out below.

Fill in the slots with curriculum you plan to use.  Can you combine multiple kids?  Will mom need to teach or simply manage and tutor?  Things are not set in stone, but this will give you a great starting point.

Notice that these one-page overviews above were my entire yearly plan! We just did the next lesson each and every day. Of course, some subjects may be looped or only covered once in a while (art, for example). But I never had a teacher book where I had to map out which math lesson each child should be doing on day #127 of school. That would have been insane.

Learn how to make yearly homeschool plans and see what a difference it will make!

Or better yet, check out this short workshop where I teach the simple way I plan for 5 kids for the school year in less than 1 hour!  It really doesn’t have to be complicated – and I’d love to show you how I do it.

>> Yearly Lesson Planning in Less Than 1 Hour Workshop<<

Choose open and go curriculum

If you’d like to ditch the detailed lesson planning, then it would be best for you to choose “open and go curriculum.”  What I mean by this is curriculum where you just find the next page and pick up where you left off the day before.  Don’t choose curriculum where you need to read the teacher’s manual to get you through the day.  Curriculum like that was meant for traditional classrooms.

Here’s an example of Writing With Skill, which gives middle school students and older the details steps to complete each assignment.

Another example of a curriculum that gives the parent the simple script necessary to work through each day’s lesson is All About Spelling. All the spelling lessons for one level are included in just one concise book. We just put a sticky note where we left off and resume again the following day.

Since our middle and high schoolers are highly independent learners, we also choose resources for them that they can manage without mom having to consult a teacher’s manual each day. For example, in the high school years we’ve now started using CTC Math, which includes video lessons and automatic grading.

Choose curriculum that requires the kids to work harder than mom

If it takes you an hour to consult the teacher’s manual and make plans for each day, then you’re probably working too hard!  It’s okay to choose curriculum that requires more from your kids than from you.

Here is a list of curriculum that we’ve used that is “open and go” and some of them even script out what mom should say!

• All About Spelling (levels 1-7)
• First Language Lessons (grades 1-4)
• Writing With Ease (grades 1-4)
• Writing With Skill (middle school)
• Mystery of History (multi-grade level)
• God’s Design for Science Curriculum (K-8)
• Analytical Grammar (middle school or high school)

Additionally, we’ve started adding these resources to our homeschool go-to list:

• Fix It! Grammar (using this in elementary + middle school) or IEW Writing Lessons
• Notgrass History (we’re using these in 9th-12th grades, but you could use in elementary or middle)
• Apologia Science (we’ve started using this for everyone, grades 4+)
• Visual Latin (using this in 9th grade)

Organize Curriculum

Make sure your space is decluttered before the school year begins and organize your curriculum and materials so that the kids know where to find things!  Nothing is more chaotic to a school day than having to find that lost book.

One tool that works amazingly well for younger kids is a workbox system.

But if you don’t have a lesson plan book, how will you know what to do each day?

Organize Schedules

You don’t have to ring bells and change subjects by the hour when you’re homeschooling, but some flow and routines will go a long way in smoothing out your day.

Visual checklists and charts work great for young kids.  We used workboxes in elementary school and they were a hit!

Now that my kids are older, they love using Trello to arrange their school weeks and workload.  As they finish assignments, they check it off and I can see their progress online.

We love Trello because:

• it’s free
• it’s online (no paper clutter)
• it’s organized ONCE at the beginning of the year
• it takes 5 minutes or less every weekend to set it up for the coming week
• it’s flexible (kids can move assignments around)
• it’s techie (my older boys love this)
• it eliminates the need for lesson planning!

Check out our easy homeschool scheduling with Trello to see the details of how we use Trello in our homeschool.

Weekly Upkeep

Once you set up this kind of flexible school routine, the weekly upkeep should only take about ten minutes.

Here’s what the weekly tasks might look like:

• clean up the school clutter on Friday
• grade any tests or papers from the week that haven’t been checked
• record any scores if you’re keeping grades (we don’t keep formal grades until high school)
• archive this week’s Trello boards
• copy new Trello boards for coming week

So if you’ve been eyeing Pinterest and think that to be a “successful” homeschool mom you need to have a detailed teacher planner, I hope this post has convinced you otherwise!  You just need a yearly plan and an organized schedule that both you and kids can follow.  Take the pressure off yourself.  You’ve got this.