What’s inside my homeschool binder? Take a peek.
Planning has always come naturally for me but it wasn’t until my daughter turned 3 that I realized, I had no system in place for organizing our homeschooling life. My daughter isn’t exclusively homeschooled but we still bring a lot into her home enrichment so it made sense to create a simple system to start our journey and refer back to weekly, monthly, and yearly.
With that said, this post isn’t just for homeschooling parents but for any parent wanting to create a system for supplementing your childs’ home environment with intention. The best part is it doesn’t cost more than $10-$15 to put it all together and get the peace of mind you’ve been looking for!
What you’ll need to make your binder:
A one-inch binder
Ultra Fine Tip dry-erase markers
10-20 pocket protectors (I like to put two sheets front and back but you could do single sheets per pocket if you’d like)
Homeschool planning kit (editable, downloadable, and printable)
Get your intentions down.
My planning kit begins with a few mind releasing exercising to bring out your personal values as they relate to homeschooling. I love these because they are excellent as a reminder on particularly hard days when we may struggle to be the positive, patient parents we aspire to be. In the next several pages from the kit, I outlined how I’d like to have a Qur’an-centric and waldorf-inspired homeschooling environment and what that means for our family.
Craft out monthly, weekly, quarterly, and yearly plans
Once you have a general framework for your homeschool focus, whether it’s a curriculum, various resources, thematic units, etc., you’ll find every kind of monthly, quarterly, yearly and weekly planner in the kit to map out your overall direction for the year. I’m a fan of rhythms over routine and I love borrowing from seasonal unit studies to make our learning more holistic. Shown below is my weekly planner page that you can customize (by subject, theme, etc.) by writing directly onto the pocket protector and changing it as the weeks progress. You can do the same thing for all the other planning pages without having to print out a new one for each week, month, or year!
Think holistically about your child’s learning
If you are homeschooling one or multiple children, the “my student” pages are great for jotting down specifics for each child such as what they enjoy, how they learn best, topics they’re excited about, and areas for improvement. You can get all the resources in the kit right here.
Subjects & Resources
Use this section of the kit to note down your subject resources for the year. The second page has six extra unlabeled areas to include your own subject focus areas and themes for the year. I often come across a great resource or curriculum but unless I save it or note it down somewhere, it disappears from my mind!
Books & Bucket Lists
No homeschooling journey is complete without lots and lots of book lists and an ever-growing bucket list, so I knew I had to include both as part of my resources. Having a place to keep track of the exciting resources we find can help with staying focused and avoiding distractions for the next shiny thing that comes about.
Confused about daily rhythms? Start time blocking!
I remember how effective time blocks used to be in high school and decided to try them out at home and wow, they are just as helpful! Time blocking allows you to break down your day and focus on a set of grouped tasks within that time slot without carrying things over from one time slot to the next. If something gets missed within a block, you simply get back to it during the same block the next day or week (depending on your rotation).
You’ll even get this printable inside the kit to help you break out your day and adjust as needed for each season.
Getting organized is much easier than it seems
The last few sections of the kit include tools to help you evaluate progress and make any changes, plan ahead, and note down key points for student meeting.
If you need any help at all with setting up your homeschooling binder, I’m just an email away (you can use the contact button below, or shoot me a message over at asma@momentora.com. I’m happy to help and it’s always a pleasure hearing from readers!
Download your planning kit below:
I hope this post was helpful for you in getting started! Thanks so much for stopping by.
Till next time,
Asma