Lesson planning forms can be great tools for homeschoolers and even unschoolers. They’re a great way to organize goals, resources and activities. They can also be invaluable for record keeping, especially for relaxed homeschoolers and unschoolers who need to document their homeschooling. There are even some free homeschool planners that include printable pages for reading lists, chores and meal plans.
There are many sources of free lesson planning forms online. Some of the best are:
Donna Young has been the ultimate source of homeschooling forms for years, including planners to suit nearly any need. This site offers a variety of lesson planning forms such as a daily planners, quarterly planners, science planners and much more.
Teacher’s Planet offers a variety of templates for lesson planning forms, including daily, weekly and monthly planners. They also offer more elaborate lesson planning forms, but these are designed for teachers who have to keep up with the bureaucracy of common core, IEPs and endless paperwork. I highly recommend sticking to the simple forms, as these will help with planning with a minimum of time and effort.
Lesson Plans Page offers a format to help with more advanced planning. Their template includes sections such as goals, required materials, assessment, extensions and so on. This template is probably more than a homeschooling parent needs, but it could be adapted in your own form for a good planner for unit studies and research topics. This site also includes information about writing lesson plans for various subjects, and includes a search option to view lesson plans made by others on nearly 200 topics.
The Homeschool Mom offers free homeschool and household planner pages that can be great tools for homeschoolers. Some of the forms include:
- Weekly planner and menu planner pages
- FlyLady compatible weekly and menu planner pages
- Month View Calendar
- Year View Calendar
- High School Course Planner
- Menu planner | Chore chart | To do list
- Weekly Planner page for use with Weekly Assignment page or Unschooling Record Keeper
- Assignment Sheet
- Reading List
- Unit Study Planner
- Unschooling Record Keeper
There are many ways to use lesson planning forms. Some of the ways that they can help homeschoolers include:
- Use them to do general homeschool planning before the start of a new year. Use quarterly or yearly planners to set a timetable for topics and goals. In the preschool years, these can include weekly themes such as bugs, dinosaurs and stars. Yearly planning can also cover country studies (such as a different country each week), rotating electives (such as month-long units on poetry, sewing or Native American studies), and other changing topics.
- Use them to plan out unit studies and upcoming topics. You can easily supplement studies of history, science and such by planning out accompanying books, activities, science experiments, field trips, writing topics, and so on. A weekly planner is a great way to get this done ahead of time so you know have everything on hand as it comes up in the kids’ studies.
- Use them to design tentative plans each week. A general weekly planner is a great way to schedule time and topics, allowing you to write down any activities already planned for the week and schedule homeschooling around them.
- Use them to track homeschooling after the fact. Many relaxed homeschoolers and unschoolers use lesson plan forms to document what their children did in each subject as the week progresses. For instance, at the end of one day a parent might fill in, “Zoo field trip (science, PE), made German dumpling recipe (reading, math, social studies), read books (reading)” and so on.
Remember that lesson planning forms are tools, designed to make life easier and not more complicated. We homeschooolers are lucky in that we get to design our own curricula, set our own schedules, and do what works best for our families. Don’t get caught up in the pressure to do everything on the list or recreate complicated school forms at home.
Happy planning!
