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homeschool planning

Homeschool Tips for Beginners

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Deciding to start homeschooling can be scary, and exciting, and overwhelming, and the list of emotions goes on and on. I have some homeschool tips for beginners to help you out on your incredible journey. I have three main takeaways for you today as you get ready to begin homeschooling. Tips for Moms. Tips the First Year. Organization Tips.

Homeschool Tips for Beginners - 3 tips beginning to homeschool

Homeschool Tips for Beginners

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Homeschool Tips for Moms

Moms, or dads, should first head to your provincial or state education website and formalize yourself with the rules and laws for homeschooling in your province.

Each province have very different laws and regulations, and requires something different of you, for example New Brunswick just needs you to fill out a form at the beginning of the school year, very simple.

Another example is Saskatchewan where each school district is different, and you are required to register, provide educational plans, and an end of year report.

Take a deep breathe, grab a cup of tea and some books to read.
Homeschool Books I Recommend for Beginning to Homeschool
Homeschool Books for Homeschool Moms
6 Secular Books for Secular Homeschooling

Do a Facebook search for homeschool groups in your area. This is the first thing I do when we move, I want to join and talk/”meet” other homeschool families right away. This is also a great way to find used curriculum as well.

Homeschool Tips for Beginners - how to start homeschooling

Homeschool Tips – First Year

Things aren’t going to go perfectly the first year. Use the first year, or even the first two or three years, to find out what works best for you and your kids. There are so many different styles of curriculum and learning styles, that for the first year you might not land on what works for your right away, and that’s OK.

My homeschool advice is to not try to create school at home. Sometimes it’s more relaxing and enjoyable to sit on the couch with a read-aloud or even workbooks than at a desk or table. If you are enjoying it, you are more likely to stick with it long term. You can find lap desks to making working on the couch easier, and neater, we have them and use them everywhere including in the vehicle.

Homeschool Organization Tips

I like digital homeschool resources that I can print off as needed and re-use for each of my kids. But digital resources do come with their own unique organizational challenges, one being forgetting what you have, and not remembering where you stored it on your computer. This Guide to Digital Homeschool Organization might be a lifesaver for you.

What about lesson plans?

How are you going to keep track of your lessons, what you want cover each day. Some people, myself included, are paper planner people. I like writing thing out by hand. But some prefer online planner that send you email reminders, which I admit can be so very helpful like the Homeschool Planet planner, you can check out my review of here.

I try to have a very rough idea of what I want to cover for the year for each of my kids. And then break it down into how many months we’ll homeschooling so I know how much of each subject to cover each week.

For example there are 118 lessons + 17 quizzes in Teaching Textbooks Level 3. That means for 9 months of school Brookland should be doing at least 15 lessons/quizzes a month. I now see she’ll be done very soon doing a lesson or two a day because she enjoys doing it.

There are many other options for keeping track of your plans including using Google tools, the calendar app built into your phone or computer. OR maybe you unschool or interest led and just want to keep track of what your kids have done.

FREE DIGITAL PLANNER

I have a Google Slides planner – 2 page layout that you can use and edit in Google Slides to create your own digital planner. CLICK THIS LINK to get a copy of it.

3 Homeschool Tips for Beginners

Recommended Products

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Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool curriculum, Homeschool Mom, homeschool Organization, homeschool planning, homeschooling

Secular Homeschool Planners

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

Have you tried to find the perfect homeschool planner for your homeschool but yet they were all filled with scripture? Finding actually secular homeschool planners isn’t easy.

Secular Homeschool Planners

Secular Homeschool Planners

*This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.*

Happy Planner – Teacher or Not

Personally I don’t have an actual homeschool planner that I use. I use and love my Happy Planner. Because we’re just in the early elementary grades and my girls work together I don’t need a lot of space in my planner. They do have a teacher edition, I don’t have it, but may check it out in the coming year.

This year though I have been using these awesome stickers for the Happy Planner for teachers.

Homeschool Planet Planner – Online

I have used the Homeschool Planet planner (online only), and it works amazingly if you don’t want paper. You can create an app for it on your phone for easier access. You can set it up to send you reminders for things like extra-curricular activities.

You can find my review of here.

A+ Homeschool Planner

Suitable to a variety of planning preferences, this homeschool planner will help you manage your home classroom with:

  • Homeschool lesson plans for up to 6 children including calendars for mapping out over the days, weeks, and months of the school year
  • Dedicated space for recording weekly grades and attendance from the beginning of the homeschool year to the end to meet state regulations
  • Motivational quotes and tips on homeschool that provide inspiration to teach and insight on how to best balance your home and school life

Erin Condren – Teacher Version

I have not used this, nor have I actually held it but other secular homeschool moms have recommended Erin Condren.

  • Two Page Monthly Calendar Spreads
  • Weekly Pages for Lesson Planning
  • Laminated Tabs & 2 Dated Calendar Options
  • Monthly Note Pages, Inspirational Quotes & More

The Wizard Homeschool Planner

If I didn’t already have my Happy Planner for the year, I would most likely be buying this Wizard Homeschool planner. I bought her Waldock’s Wizard’s and Wands curriculum and love it. We can’t wait to get started in September.

Order Out of Chaos – Online

I just learned of this one myself after seeing other moms recommend it. The academic planners look like they would be great for teaching your child time management skills. And the price is awesome!

If you know of another secular homeschool planner, I would love to hear about it so I can add it to the list.

Recommended Products to get Planning!

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Online Art Curriculum for Homeschool

Homeschooling Multiple Kids with Ease

Best Places to Find Secular Curriculum

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool planning, Secular Homeschool, secular homeschool planner, secular planner

Keeping Track of EVERYTHING in Google Sheets

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

There is a lot going on in my head a lot of the time. I write everything down, otherwise I lose whatever information I need. Google Sheets has been very helpful. Homeschooling and online schooling families want flexibility. They want the freedom to work when they want, where they want, without being tied to a desk in a classroom. One tool that can help provide that flexibility is Google Drive.

Keeping Track of EVERYTHING in Google Sheets

Keeping Track of EVERYTHING in Google Sheets

*This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.*

I have a number of different sheets in my Google Drive. Some of them are:

  • homeschool curriculum choices for the coming year
  • blog posts – no doubles please
  • online courses I have purchased for myself – plus log in info
  • online courses for my kids – plus log in info
  • and more!

How to Use Google Sheets

All you need to get started with Google Sheets is a gmail account. If you have any experience with Microsoft Excel then you’ll know exactly how to use Sheets.


How to Use it for Homeschooling

Keeping Track of Curriculum

I had a spread sheet set up while I was figuring out what curriculum I wanted to use for this coming year, for each of my kids. I like to color code it so that at a glance I can see what is going on. (And this is not complete for the coming year.)

Keeping Track of Chores

Use it  to keep track of everything that you have going on each each. This can be keeping track of:

  • Tracking community service hours for your children
  • Budgeting for you and your children
  • Trip planning
  • Rewards system/payment for chores etc
  • Use it as a planner for your lessons

Similar posts that you may be interested in:

 Google Slides for Homeschool Lessons & Projects

Google Slides for Homeschool Lessons & Projects

Google Drive for Homeschool

Google Drive for Homeschool

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: curriculum, google sheets, homeschool planner, homeschool planning

Organized Homeschool Lesson Planning

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

I like to look at homeschool lesson planning as the parts instead of looking at the whole, break it all down into easier bite size pieces. Organized homeschool lesson planning is better done bit by bit for me, and for anyone that might get overwhelmed by the idea of planning for the year. You can also look at getting a curriculum that is all planned out for you!

Organized Homeschool Lesson Planning

Organized Homeschool Lesson Planning

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Getting organized for the beginning of the year is not an easy feat, it is not easy to stay organized and ahead of the game for the whole year. I do things a little differently than some other homeschoolers may because I don’t look at the year as a whole so much.

DIY or Done for You

Over the last couple years I have been using BookShark and they have the planning done for me right done to each day of the week. But that is only for a few of our subjects, for the rest I still have to figure out what we are doing and when.

For example: RightStart Math is one of those that I plan myself. X amount of lessons in total divided by the number of weeks of school we’ll be doing, in our case 36 weeks. This gives me an idea of how many lessons we need to cover each week, then each day. I’ll be doing the same thing for other subjects and/or topics that we are studying.

Alphabet Letter of the Week

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Monthly Lesson Planning

At the beginning of each month I sit down and plan, in pencil, for that month. Some of things that I am looking at and doing are:

  • seeing if we are staying on track – how many lessons are completed compared to how many need to be completed still
  • plan any science experiments we want to do
  • request books from the library for the month
  • more their worksheets into their binders and anything I want to keep to their portfolios

I also like to look through our history books in particular for things that we might want to try our hand at doing, like this hieroglyphs craft that we did last year. They still remember that history lesson, so I like to plan at least two or three of these extra hands on learning activities a month.

I’m a paper planner gal, I like to write with the pretty colored pencils, because they can be erased if something needs to change. I love using washi tape and stickers to make my planner pretty and unique to me. Which is why I use a Happy Planner.

Maybe you prefer to have your planning online where you can access it from anywhere. I wish I could use this method more, or I should say, I wish I would stick to this. Homeschool planet has a great planner you should check out. You can get a 30 day trial to test it out. You can learn more about it in my review of it. I really did like it, I just love paper planners too much to stick with digital.

Homeschool Planet - Online Homeschool Planner

Daily Homeschool Lesson Planning

Some days we’re not feeling the work planned and just need to take a break and relax, or find a different way to learn the subject topic. Watching documentaries or heading to the library to find new books on that topic are some of our favorite ways to learn without doing schoolwork.

It gives us a little break, changes the learning medium and can just be plain fun. I would rather we all be learning about something different than learning about nothing at all.

Organized Homeschool Lesson Planning

Start your homeschool lesson planning out small. Don’t go big and try to plan the whole year out right away. Something might happen that you can’t stick to that plan. Maybe you hate the curriculum that you choice.

Try not to stress too much. Ease into your school year. Let your kids set the pace for the first little while, and just add a little more in until you are getting what you want to accomplish done.

There is no wrong way to plan your homeschool lessons. Do what works for you even if that it figuring it one day at a time to start. Work your way to planning a week at a time, and then two weeks, or month.

Recommended Products for Homeschool Planning:

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Getting Organized with A Happy Planner

Getting Organized with A Happy Planner

Planning Your Secular Homeschool Subjects

Planning Your Secular Homeschool Subjects

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool planning, homeschooling, organized homeschool

Planning Your Secular Homeschool Subjects

by Ashley Mullen Leave a Comment

There are the 3 R’s of homeschooling the veteran homeschoolers claim you need to cover everyday. The three R’s are: Reading, ‘Righting, and ‘Rithmetic of homeschooling. I did not make that up, but around here it’s reading, language arts, and math, same thing just different words, right? But you need to decide what homeschool subjects are most important to you and your kids, those that you’ll be working on year long, and those that you may choose to add in as electives. Grab your notebook or planner and pen and get started.

Planning Your Secular Homeschool subjects

Planning Your Secular Homeschool Subjects

*This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.*

The subjects you decide on what you are going to teach. Initially, your subjects might be quite general: subjects like math, history, language arts, science, and so on. After you selecting the general subjects you’ll teaching, you further refine those subjects to be more focused on the specifics of each subject, such as Intro to World History, Algebra 1, Biology, and so on.

Provincial or State Laws Regarding Homeschool Subjects

One big thing to consider when planning your homeschool subjects for each year is what you are required by provincial (or state) law and/or school board to teach your children.

For example in Saskatchewan:

Language Arts – Required Grade 1-12
Math- Required Grade 1-12
Science- Required Grade 1-12
Social Studies- Required Grade 1-12
Health- Required Grade 1-12
Art and Physical Education – Required Grade 1-12
Career Education – Required 6-9

Homeschooling in Canada

What is Covered Under Each Subject

The best part of choosing to homeschool is that you get to choose what you teach your children. For instance, gardening is science, and we get really hands on in gardening. If there is a subject that your kids really want to learn about.

For history this year my kids are interested in Dinosaurs, Early Humans, and Ancient Times. Basically we are covering Pre-historic times because that was their request. I’ll be creating unit studies to make sure we learn about what interest them the most.

Elective Homeschool Subjects

As your children grow you may want to add additional subjects tailored to the topics that your children are interested in. You’ll also be changing the specific focus of each subject, moving from Intro to World History for insistence to The History of North America, and increasing the difficultly of other subjects.

The extra stuff we can do:

There is no limit on the extra things that we can teach and/or learn with our children. For example this year we’ve adding typing. An important skill is typing but it is not “required”.

Recommended products for secular homeschooling:

Similar posts you may be interested in:

Getting Started with Secular Homeschooling

Choosing A Secular Homeschool Curriculum

Planning Your Secular Homeschool Subjects

Best Places to Get Secular Curriculum

How We Enjoy Secular Homeschooling

Filed Under: Homeschool, Homeschool Helps Tagged With: homeschool planning, Homeschool Subjects

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A Little About Me

I'm Ashley, a Canadian secular homeschool mom of 3, living in Nova Scotia.

I share our adventures in homeschooling and parenting.

You can usually find us at the library surrounded by books.
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