The Best Homeschool Planner for Your Busy Schedule

A successful homeschool starts with a good plan, and the best homeschool planner can help you record and organize those plans so you can act on them. There are a lot of homeschool planners on the market today. The number of choices can be overwhelming. We’ve taken time to research many planners and have included some homeschool planner reviews and tips for choosing the best planner for your schedule.

How to find a homeschool planner

Not every planner will work for every homeschooler. Here are some things to consider when shopping for a new planner for your unique homeschool experience.

1.     Consider Your Goals

How many features do you need or not need?

Homeschool planners differ wildly when it comes to features. Some only include space for lesson planning. Some offer attendance tracking and grade recording. Others even offer space for meal planning, reading lists, chore schedules, and more. So consider—how much of your life do you want to organize or track with this planner? Homeschool planners that contain more features than you will use may end up overwhelming you and make it more difficult to get planning done.

2.     Consider Your Unique Homeschool Situation

What grade are you planning for?

Your homeschool situation is unique, and you want to find a planner that meets your needs. If you have multiple kids, some planners won’t work for you. You will also find that some planners work better for elementary grades, but others are designed with high schoolers in mind. It’s a good idea to preview a planner before you buy it to make sure that it will fit your homeschool situation.

3.     Consider Your State Homeschool Requirements

What does your state require of you?

Even though it is legal to homeschool in all fifty states, some states require a lot more reporting. You may have to keep track of attendance days, carefully record grades for every assignment, submit a portfolio of work, or even report field trips. Look for a homeschool planner that will help you meet your state’s legal requirements.

The best homeschool planner options

Free homeschool planner

Cultivated Homeschool Planner

• Cost: Free!
• Pro: Detailed planning pages
• Con: Expensive to print

This free printable planner includes pages for attendance tracking, goal setting, and reflection as well as term, monthly, and weekly planning pages. The entire file is 232 full-color pages, which may end up being expensive to print and bind yourself. But you can choose to print the pages that are most helpful to you.

Homeschool planner app

Homeschool Planet Planner

• Cost: $69.95 annually

• • • + cost of lesson plans to load (around $10 per subject)
  • Pro: Easy to use & customizable experience
  • Con: Expensive (especially if purchasing several subjects for multiple kids)

This homeschool planner has both an online version and a mobile version. For an easy experience, you can purchase “plug-in” lesson plans for many homeschool curriculum programs including BJU Press. This planner gives you the ability to customize lesson plans, add home and work schedules, and create a custom grade book and reports.

Homeschool planner for busy moms

A Simple Plan Planner

• Cost: $23 (Amazon)

• • Pro: Good for planning extracurricular activities
  • Con: Fewer features

This 12-month (July–June) homeschool planner comes as spiral-bound and tabbed. It allows you to plan for up to 6 students and includes yearly monthly, and weekly calendars. It also includes grade and attendance record forms, suggested reading lists, and a place to record contact info for extracurricular activities. This homeschool planner is great for busy moms because its simple format helps you stay organized even though you may not have a lot of time to devote to planning.

Homeschool planner for managing multiple students

Ultimate Homeschool Planner

• Cost: $23.20 (Christian Book Distributor)
• Pro: Flexibility for a busy mom
• Con: May be overwhelming, especially if you’re only using it for one student.

This spiral-bound planner includes planning tips and space for goal setting and prioritization, prayer requests, Bible reading. It also includes undated monthly calendars and weekly calendars you can use to plan lessons for up to six kids. In the back, you will find a journaling space, a record of grades, and a place to record field trips and reading lists. Overall, it is very flexible and comprehensive, and probably a good choice if you are homeschooling multiple kids.

Weekly homeschool planner

Well Planned Day

• Cost: $38.95 (Amazon)

• • Pro: Includes chore charts
  • Con: Maximum of four students

This spiral-bound planner includes fully dated monthly and weekly calendars (July–June) and integrates menu planning, to-do lists, reading logs, attendance and grade logs, holiday planning pages, chore charts, shopping lists, and report cards. Beware that this planner only allows you to plan for four students. But if you are looking for a planner to help organize your household, this one may be helpful to you. There is also an online version available for $65.

Printable homeschool planner

Brave Homeschool Planner

• • Cost: $6.99
  • Pro: Flexible dates
  • Con: May be expensive to print

This homeschool planner PDF includes chore charts, pages to record grades and attendance days, as well as pages for recording curriculum choices, field trips, and reading lists. It also includes undated monthly and weekly calendars and even provides space for the user to fill in dates after the lessons were accomplished. It works for up to five students and offers a lot of planning flexibility. Since it is a PDF download, it also allows you to customize your planner by printing the pages most helpful to you and arranging them the way you prefer.

Online homeschool planner and integrated curriculum resource

The HUB

• • Cost: Free (full access with curriculum purchase)
    • Pro: Easy to skip and reschedule lessons
    • Con: Works best with BJU Press materials

Personal experience review:

If you love using BJU Press curriculum, you are going to love our new online homeschooling tool—the BJU Press Homeschool Hub. I’ve had the privilege of using the beta version for an entire homeschool year and can’t imagine homeschooling without it. The calendar is my favorite feature. It allows me to see the lesson plans for each of my children’s BJU Press courses in a weekly, daily, or monthly view. I can skip or reschedule lessons almost effortlessly, and I can also completely customize the individual lessons themselves.

If you would like to use the BJU Press Homeschool Hub in the next school year, learn more or get started now!

When you choose a planner for your next school year, make sure that you choose one that you like and gets you excited about planning!