The Brave Homeschool Planner 2020-2021: A Planner by Homeschool Moms for Homeschool Moms

Extras always seem to weigh me down. They require work, rob me of my energy, and breed unnecessary guilt. As a busy, work-at-home, homeschooling mom, I don't have time for that. I'd rather focus my effort on things that bring me joy and add, not detract, from my day. And so I purge all the extras, guilt-free. I prune away any non-essentials...of my time, of my home, of my school.

Last year, I made the decision to paper purge. For years, I used a popular homeschool planner. And while I was happy with the basic set-up of the planner, I always felt a wee-bit burdened by the pages and pages of extras that I never really used. FOMO sometimes guilt-drove me to fill in the blanks. But all the time spent logging unnecessaries seemed like such a waste.


Then, I stumbled upon another popular planner. It was a bare-bones, basic planner--everything I thought I needed. It was sensible and functional. Workaday, you might say, like orthopedic shoes and brown paper lunch sacks. But just like those, the planner could not inspire or excite me. It did the job, mind you, but was so aggressively average looking that I may as well have been using a spiral notebook to schedule our days.

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I was at an impasse. It seemed I had two choices: flashy and overwhelming or prudent and blah.

It became glaringly obvious that it was time to break up with my underwhelming planners and forge a new relationship.

When I went looking around for a planner that could fit the bill--one that combined the appeal of my first planner and the simplicity of the second, I came away empty-handed. So, as with most of life, necessity became the mother of invention.

I needed a planner that would give me the bravery to chart a unique course for me and mine.

I needed a planner that would fit my life, not one that forced its way in.

I needed a planner that would adapt to the unique needs of homeschooling.

Enter the planner that was inspired by my book, Homeschool Bravely and it's scheduling companion, The Quick-Start Guide to Brave Homeschool Schedules: The Brave Homeschool Planner

What Makes the Brave Homeschool Planner Better

It's made by a homeschool mom for a homeschool mom.

I learned early on in my homeschooling journey that no run-of-the-mill planner would do for a homeschooler's schedule. A traditional classroom-style planner falls short too: the calendar grids don't align with a homeschool lifestyle, the lesson plan space only accommodates for one grade level, the emphasis is on grades and rubrics. The Brave Homeschool Planner, on the other hand, was designed by a homeschool mom with the specific needs of a homeschool mom in mind.

It's the perfect blend of pretty and practical.

As I mentioned, The Brave Homeschool Planner does NOT include a lot of superfluous extras that those expensive homeschool planners add on like menu sheets, budget planning pages, and Christmas gift lists...not because those types of lists aren't important, but because most homeschool moms prefer not to muddy the planning waters with all of those things. Having all of those extra home-keeping pages end up distracting from the work at hand. There's no fluff in the Brave Homeschool Planner. There's only homeschool specific planning pages that help to create homeschool focus.

It's a basic homeschool portfolio.

Because the Brave Homeschool Planner provides space for keeping accurate records of attendance, curriculum choices, field trips, book lists, as well as daily schedules and lesson plans, it acts as a basic homeschool portfolio. At the end of the year, it can be stashed away with work samples and projects to complete a comprehensive paper trail for the entire year.

It's firm but flexible.

In the past when you've used homeschool planners, you were probably faced with two scenarios. You could write down the lessons you hoped to accomplish on a particular date and then work yourself into a tizzy to complete all those lessons on that date in order to not get behind your plan OR worse yet, you could write down the lessons, not complete all of them on the date you had hoped you would, and then spend the rest of the year feeling a few days ahead in some subjects and a few days behind in others.

But, with the Brave Homeschool Planner, there's a Door Number Three. Unlike most planners, the Brave Homeschool Planner provides days, not dates. At the top of each weekly scheduling page is a small month-at-a-glance calendar to provide a bird's eye view of the month. But each scheduling column on the page only includes the day of the week, not a hard-and-fast date. That means, before the school year even starts, you can write down the lessons you hope to accomplish on a dateless column and then later, during the school year, you can write in the date when the lessons were actually accomplished. It's a small mind shift, but one that eliminates any unnecessary mom guilt.

Days are suggestions that help keep momentum on the school week. Dates are bullies that chain a homeschool mom to feelings of failure.

It provides room for the unplanned.

The "Notes" space that runs along the bottom of each 2-page scheduling spread provides space for jotting down any "unplanned" ideas you might have throughout the week like books you'd like to check out from the library for an upcoming unit study, words that you've found your kids consistently misspelling, or potential projects you need to buy supplies for. "Notes" leaves room for the detours of the week--the unplanned ideas that need space too.

What's Included in The Brave Homeschool Planner

In this 182-page digital download, you will receive a printable homeschool planner that includes the following pages:

• Emergency Contact Info
• Daily Chore Chart
• Potential Field Trips
• What We're All About
• Daily Schedule Template
• Year-at-a-Glance Calendar
• Attendance Sheets (for 4 students)
• Curriculum/Book Planning Sheets (for 4 students)
• 2-Page Monthly Calendar Spreads (July 2020-July 2021)
• Weekly Planning Pages (July 2020-July 2021) for 4 students

For your printing convenience, there are two versions to choose from: Full-Color and Black & White with Colored Accents.

Why You Need the Brave Homeschool Planner

With a planner like this, you can write all your homeschooling plans down and walk away! You can, in a very real sense, schedule your ENTIRE homeschool year, stick "homeschooling" on a shelf, and come back to it the next day knowing that all your thoughts and plans and preparations will still be there when you need them.

Education is a discipline. For your kids, but also for you. Just as a runner needs a clear and known track in order to know how best to get to the finish line, you need an organized and efficient plan for your homeschool day.

As I've said before, a plan brings freedom and lets you put your entire homeschool day on autopilot so that even when interruptions come, you can still have forward motion. It lets you slow down and enjoy the journey. 

So many of the pieces of a homeschool mom's day are out of her control. Homeschooling shouldn't be one of them.

Wanna Win a Planner of Your Very Own?

Of course, you do! Now's your chance to win one of six planner downloads I'm giving away!

To enter:

Leave a comment below telling me what part of planning/scheduling your homeschool year is daunting AND/OR head on over to Instagram. Be sure to follow @unlikely_homeschool. Tag at least one friend in the comments section. If you win, so does your friend! You can tag as many friends as you would like for additional chances to win. Just be sure to tag each in a separate comment. For an additional Insta entry, share about the giveaway in your stories, but be sure to tag @unlikely_homeschool.

No purchase necessary to win. Must be 18 years old or older to enter. Two winners will be randomly selected here on the blog and two winners and their friends will be randomly selected on Intstagram. All will be announced sometime after Friday, April 10, 2020. The winners will be notified here in the comments and/or Instagram and will have 72 hours to respond. If an email is not provided or the winner does not respond, the prize will be forfeited and a new winner will be randomly selected. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook or Instagram.

***Mandatory Entry: To enter, be sure to leave a comment in the "comments" section of this post telling me what part of planning/scheduling your homeschool year is daunting OR tag someone on Instagram. If you are logging in the blog comments section as "anonymous," please include at least your first name at the end of your comment.