Printable Homeschooling Attendance sheet and Blank Lesson Planner

Many, many families are jumping into the homeschooling world this fall due to all the changes COVID19 has caused to our public and private schools.  While, we have homeschooled from the start, I have always believed each child/parent/family should do what works best for them.  But what works best for families is changing this year.  I thought a few free printables to keep you organized might be helpful.

Every state has it’s own homeschooling laws and rules.  Some require a lot of reporting, others hardly any.  Please be sure to look up your own state’s requirements.  All the states I’ve lived in have required attendance to be recorded, so I thought I’d share my attendance sheet.  It’s super simple, but it has worked well for me the last 4 years or so.

Click, download and open in a pdf viewing program like Adobe Acrobat before printing for the best results.

I have a 3 ring binder that I use to keep my lesson plans in, and I always put this attendance sheet in the very front. 

When we get going in school, I simply pull it out, mark an x on that day and then flip to my plans for that week. (more later on about how I lesson plan, and a printable).  If we do something else, like a field trip, are sick, vacationing or just enjoying a random beautiful day off- I’ll mark it appropriately.  At the bottom I try to keep track of where those field trips were.  Here’s some real-life pictures of my attendance sheet from the last several years. You’ll have to forgive me my messy handwriting and random notes (and scribbles from what was probably a baby/toddler). I never made these with the intention of sharing with the world- so they’re 100% genuine, for better or worse.

School at home doesn’t have to look like school at school.  If you look closely at some of these- you’ll see lots of randomly missing Xs when there ‘should’ have been school. Lots of those were “Hey it’s beautiful today- lets just play outside all day.”  Or maybe they were “I’m SO morning sick I can barely function” days.  Or who knows?  I’m sure I had a good reason.  But we do plenty of school, and look at all the cool places we’ve gone to in the past several years- it’s been like a time-capsule looking at these. I could reminisce over these for many more paragraphs but I’ll spare you and move on to my lesson planners.

The BEFORE I GET STARTED, DISCLAIMER: Everyone lesson plans differently, you do what works for you.  If you are going with a box curriculum, you may not even need a planner- all the planning is mostly done already for you.  We have done a classical/Charlotte Mason-y/stuff Kristen just makes up style of homeschooling, in which I plan for books I want to read aloud, activities I want to do, places to go, and sometimes shows to watch that align with Catholic Schoolhouse as our spine.   This method has worked really well for me and my kids- but like I said at the beginning of the post- I support each parent/child/family doing what works best for you.  Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for the choices you are making for your kids- and don’t feel like what you’re doing has to look like what anyone else is doing.

Ok that was a long disclaimer- sorry. 

 

Click, download and open in a pdf viewing program like Adobe Acrobat before printing for the best results.

So for years, I’ve used my 1- page Weekly Lesson Planning Sheet.  I prefer to write my lesson plans in pencil, while I’m in my school room looking at my bookshelf and school stuff.  Hence these are blank- and I just print a bunch of them, hole punch them, stick them in a 3 ring binder- go to my school room and plan about 6-9 weeks at a time. 

You’ll see right away there’s an ‘extra column’ all the way at the left, with different subjects written in it.  I don’t plan my individual days like a lot of people do.  I plan for the week and I write those ideas down in that left most column.  Then I leave the columns under the days blank.  When we get to that week- and we start doing the stuff in the column, I’ll write that under that day.  So- really this is sort of a planner but also a ‘recorder’ for my lessons.  I like to ‘plan’ by the week instead of the day for two main reasons:

It takes less time to plan for a week, than individual days.

It’s less stressful to me. 

I used to write things for Monday ON Monday, and then when we didn’t do it Monday I was ‘behind.’  (cue the internal angst)  Really, did it matter if we read about the transcontinental railroad on Monday vs Tuesday? Nope.  So in an effort to reduce my self-inflicted disappointment and anxiety, I switched to weekly planning.  AND I add a blank week in every 6 weeks, that is supposed to be my ‘catch up’ week, where we do all my great ideas that we didn’t get to in the previous 6 weeks.

OK, so here’s how I do it.  I simply look at our Catholic Schoolhouse Tour Guide and pick books, activities and stuff I want to do that week and write it under the appropriate title in that left most column.  Then during the week I write what we actually did that day in that day’s column.  Sometimes it matches up, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Here’s some real life pictures of my planning pages from years past.  Again- I didn’t record any of this with the intention of sharing with the world.

You can see I totally ditched the planned science on Monday to teach my kids about Hurricanes because Hurricane Irma must’ve been making landfall.  We even made some sort of craft with cotton balls. We were supposed to be studying birds. This is homeschooling folks.

This is me on my A-game, of course it’s week 1 lol 😉

Ok for variety- here are some of my less fabulous planner pages so you know what real life homeschooling can be like.  I plan- we do none of it- my kids all survived and had a great time. 

So this last one is special- you might notice a change in handwriting.  I had a baby and was in the hospital, and grandma came to help with the ‘big kids.’  Even though she didn’t have to, Grandma looked at my planner saw a couple things she could and wanted to do, did them with the kids and recorded it in my planner. 

Alright, so why is there a 2 page planner also?  Well, I have three kids I’m homeschooling this fall (how are they all so old?!).  Ok, well the youngest will be 4 soon, but I homeschool Pre-K stuff at this age, plus she WANTS to do school with the big kids, so I might as well plan on it. 

While we all study the same stuff for most subjects (history, science, religion, geography, art) I’d like to add more notes about what I’m wanting out of my 4th grader and 1st grader this year.  So I needed more space, and decided on a double page planner, that also includes Saturday and Sunday (because sometimes homeschooling happens on weekends too).   Print the 2 page version double sided and stick in your binder.

I hope these printables and the little glimpse into my personal world of homeschooling can help you prepare for your own year of homeschooling.  It really is a beautiful thing- watching your children learn and grow, and guiding them along the way. There will be tough days, but there will be awesome days.  If you’re new to homeschooling, just know- it looks different for everyone and that’s fine.  You don’t have to make your homeschool look like your kids previous public school.  Kids love learning through story books, coloring their own pictures, reenacting history with dolls and stuffed animals, building forts, creating play-doh sculptures of science topics, going outside, drawing diagrams in sidewalk chalk, I could keep going but you get the idea.  When you are comfortable to do so, step outside the curriculum box and have fun learning with your kids!

May God bless you and your children as you adventure (or continue) homeschooling this year!