Resources for home ed planning designed to honour and encourage your child’s natural love of learning.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Are you planning your next homeschool year?
Want to make this your best year yet?
Looking for resources that will help you plan, and honour and encourage your child’s natural love of learning?
You’re in the right place, my friend.
Planning home education can easily get overwhelming. With a whole wide world of wonderful learning at your fingertips, it can be hard to know where to begin.
That’s where we come in.
With 13 years and counting on the home ed clock, our family of 6 have done our fair share of planning. And while we’ve made some mistakes, for sure, we’ve also learned a ton.
We’ve used all of these resources and found them super-helpful.
So, let us be your guide to the best best-year-yet resources for planning home education. In our humble opinion, of course 😉
Heads up: This post may contain affiliate links. This means I could get a small commission from any sales made through these links, at no extra cost to you. I’m super picky about the links on my site and only share resources I know and trust. Thanks in advance if you follow any of my links, I hope you find them helpful. Full disclosure policy here.
13 Best-Year-Yet Resources For Home Ed Planning
Okay, before we get to the resources, let’s get clear on a couple of things.
- REMEMBER: You are not alone.
For one thing, there’s us. And we want to help.
But even more important than us… there’s your child.
And let me remind you, where that one’s concerned…
SPOILER ALERT:
We can offer children learning opportunities, but we can’t force them to actually learn. Learning requires cooperation on the part of the learner. We can’t force knowledge into a child’s head, though a lot of people spend a lot of time trying.
- Your job isn’t to make your child learn.
They’ve been doing that super-successfully since the moment they were born.
Your job is way cooler than that.
You-
…get to curate a life that makes our children flourish and thrive!
Racheous
And these resources will help.
*Cue my best voiceover impression*
ATTENTION: The following resources for home-ed planning have all been checked and found compatible with natural learning, consent-based learning and unschooling. At no point will you be required to impose a curriculum on your child, or use any forms of force, coercion or manipulation. Please enjoy your planning.
If that sounds like your jam, then let’s get on with the planning par-tay 🎈
Getting Clear On Your Vision
Now, I know you want the best for your child.
And you’re a teensy, tiny bit scared terrified of getting it wrong. You don’t want to mess up and forget that one vital ingredient on which your child’s whole future hinges.
Of course. I get it. Believe me, I’ve been there. And you know, you and me – we’re bound to go back. Again and maybe even, again*
But striving to be the best for your child, that’s a good thing. As long as it doesn’t keep you stuck and stop you from taking action.
And that’s what we’re here for, to help you get out of planning procrastination and get on with enjoying your life.
*When the fear of failure strikes, have a read of these:
Feel like a rubbish parent? 9 things to remember when you doubt your parenting…
What to do when you feel like a rubbish parent : 13 steps to dealing with parenting doubt
How to Use Goal Setting to Organize Your Unschool – Rule This Roost
Katrina’s all about living with purpose and intention. And the model of goal setting she describes in this post can help you live more intentionally too.
She starts with a family vision that everyone gets to be a part of. She then goes on to describe the process of setting short and long-term goals with her children, to make this vision a practical reality.
Structure, Schedules… and Unschooling? – Unschooling Mom2Mom
Sue’s a mum of grown unschoolers with tons of experience. She begins this post by inviting you to relax and enjoy the time you have with your children.
As the star of the show, your child needs a stage manager. And to help you fulfill that important role, Sue offers five tips to get you thinking about structure and schedules in a new way.
My Unschool Unplanning Strewing Notebook – Stories Of An Unschooling Family
Another experienced mum of grown unschoolers, Sue offers a simple but super-useful tool for organizing resources and dealing with homeschool registration requirements.
Sue’s unplanning strewing notebook, set up in Evernote to keep track of resources, kept them easily accessible whenever her children wanted them.
How Ticking Off Boxes Can Be a Waste of Time – Stories Of An Unschooling Family
Another resource from Sue at Stories of an Unschooling Family. This one is a cautionary tale and welcome reminder that just like food, we can’t force learning into a child.
She also offers reassurance that your children, just like hers, are curious people. As usual, Sue manages to strike a brilliant balance between encouragement and reality check. Love it!
Unschooling Curriculum – Sandra Dodd
Yet another long-time unschooling mum whose children are grown, and another resource to help meet homeschool regulations.
Sandra has gathered a bumper collection of lists and links in this post. Tons of specific examples to show, not just how learning happens as a natural consequence of living, but also how you can turn those experiences into a formal document if required.
Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers – Sandra Dodd
More from Sandra, this time a collection of frameworks to help you see possibilities and opportunities to support your child’s natural learning.
From the sink-like-a-stone method to the universe-in-a-drop-of-water, and many more besides, these can help you see learning and connections you might otherwise miss.
Organizing Your Best-Year-Yet
Okay, so now you’ve had a chance to get clear on your vision. And you know WHAT matters.
It’s time to get on with the HOW.
How do you manage your time and organize your days for your best homeschool year yet?
These resources for home ed planning are full of practical examples. Jam-packed with sample schedules, lists and loops, ideas and activities. All designed to help you and your family have the best year yet.
So, let’s get down to business:
Your Unschooling Curriculum – Unschooling Mom2Mom
Offering a skeleton structure for your day, Sue suggests six unschooling curriculum topics you can use to organize your time, these include play, conversation, curiosity, and more.
And in case you’re worried subjects like history or science don’t feature, Sue offers welcome reassurance, that these will naturally show up as and when they’re relevant. And when they do, learning about them becomes way easier and much more enjoyable.
Make a Home School Schedule – Homeschooling-ideas
Sonya has a collection of schedule ideas and tons of inspiring content to help you pick the right one for you. She also has a free ebook, Planned Spontaneity featuring green and amber checklists to help you keep track of activities ready to go and those still needing more prep.
These lists work well with her Time Out Schedule and Ignite the Fire checklist, both designed to help you support self-directed learning.
An Easy How To Homeschool Plan – NurtureStore
Cathy urges you to ‘put down the highlighter pens and step away from the spreadsheet’. Instead, she suggests keeping your plan super simple and leaving lots of time for play, for reading, and for relaxing.
This whole site is designed to help put the magic back into learning and is packed with beautiful art and craft resources, perfect if you have younger children.
Brave Writer Lifestyle – Brave Writer
A free program from Julie at Brave Writer. As the name suggests, this is much more a lifestyle than a curriculum.
Contains 16 activities for you to try with your children, including reading aloud, poetry teatime, nature journaling, big juicy conversations, and Shakespeare. Beautifully inspiring!
Okay, so hands up, these last two resources are written by me. But don’t let that put you off 😉.
9 Home Education Routines That Brighten Up Our Days – Taking A Kinder Path
This post contains some of our favorite home ed routines.
From family meetings and five-minute room rescues, to table time and games afternoons, we love weaving these wonders into our weeks. Which one will you try?
4 Lists To Liven Up Your Home Ed Days (And Keep You On Track For A Life You Love) 😊
If you’re like me, whenever you’re wondering where to start, the answer’s usually… with a list! How about a joy list, or an adventure list? The four lists in this post help us organize our days and live more intentional lives.
With two bonus lists for those difficult days when you need that bit more. You’re welcome, my lovely!
Wrapping It Up
With great power comes great responsibility.
Uncle Ben, Spiderman.
Home education is a great responsibility. But so is parenting. And chances are, you’ve been rocking that gig for a while now.
And you can rock this one too!
Planning is no one-hit-wonder. It builds over time. And with a healthy dose of reflection and review, you get to refine and revamp your plans.
And those plans, they’re only the beginning. It’s what you do with them that counts.
Remember that reminder way back when we started: You’re not alone.
Not only do you get the honor and adventure of walking alongside your child on their learning journey.
But now you have a trusted toolkit of resources to take with you.
And with respect running right through each and every one of these resources for home-ed planning, you know you can rely on them to help you and your child have your best year yet.
So, what are you waiting for? Go on…
Get on with that planning, you know you want to 😎
Keep reading for more home-ed tips:
22 time management hacks for home ed that really help 🙂
Top 7 trusty time management tips I use everyday (home-ed mama of 4)
For more support, sign up to my newsletter. And look forward to regular round-ups of recent content and lots of other juicy joy and kindness-connected goodies.
And still there’s more.. if you love books, check out our bookshop 📚
Enjoy your week x