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Easy Homeschool Organization Ideas + Free Homeschool Planner

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Looking for a little more organization for your child’s home school or remote learning environment? This post has some easy ideas to consider!

homeschool setup

Thank you to Staples for being our partner in creating this post!

It’s been a crazy year, hasn’t it? That probably goes without saying!

Many people have been thrown into this world of remote learning, home school, or maybe a hybrid of both (or a hybrid of remote and in school learning).

For our family, we had planned to start homeschooling before this global pandemic began, but it made the process a little easier. We have LOVED it so far (just about a month in), but I am finding that my need to be more organized.

While we have a lot of flexibility with our day to day schedule, soemtimes it’s easy to put things off that should get done because there’s so much flexibility. Forrest and I agree – we do better having some kind of structure.

We also are using My Tech High here in Colorado, which helps a lot with the expense of homeschooling. However, there are certain things we need to keep organized, deadlines to keep in mind, and expenses to track in order to get reimbursed, so we have to be a bit more organized there.

I’m no expert, but I have been learning some tips and tricks for the organization of our homeschool. For this post, I’ve also gathered some other ideas so hopefully there’s something for everyone!

Free Homeschool Planner

Before I get started, I wanted to share our free homeschool planner. This is an 8 page printable guide that includes lots of pages to help you get organized. It includes:

  • Daily Schedule
  • Weekly Notes
  • Reading List
  • Monthly Activities
  • Assignment Log
  • Online resources
  • Score Sheets
  • Important Supplies

I would suggest printing out and binding this planner at somewhere like Staples, or by using your own printer (I love my HP Printer). Go through the pages and select which ones you are going to need on a weekly/monthly basis and print enough

Learning Area

child sitting at desk

If you’ve joined many homeschool groups or looked at any Instagram hashtags related to homeschooling, you’ve likely felt a little overwhelmed as you’ve seen some beautiful and very organized learning areas.

And if you want something setup like a classroom and have a dedicated room – more power to you. However, it doesn’t need to be fancy if you don’t want it to.

I do recommend having a dedicated area where all your homeschooling materials and curriculum can be stored. Because otherwise (if you are like me), it will all end up getting misplaced and lost…making things a lot more stressful.

In our house, we have used some old furniture that we’ve accumulated over the years, combined with a few helpful organizational tools from Staples, to make a functional and simple learning space for our kids.

If you need a new chair, desk, or other furniture, be sure to check out the selection from Staples.

There are lots of great ideas online and on Pinterest!

Equipment

child on ipad

I think it’s good to have all the equipment (like computers) that you need in one spot that’s easily accessibly. We prefer to have computers, tablets, etc. in a common space in the home, and that’s where they stay.

We have an iPad for learning, and I bought a keyboard case to go with it. I think this keeps it nice and safe.

We also have a desktop computer in the living room, headphones that can be used for computer/iPad learning, and we also have a printer. We have a new HP one that I love. Very user-friendly and easy enough for any of us to use!

hp printer

I like HP printers because you can use them with HP Instant Ink, which is amazing. The one we bought came with 8 months free. If you’ve never used it before, they have different subscriptions for different amounts of paper – so you pay based on usage rather than just on ink. If the printer detects you’ll be running out of ink soon, it ships some out before you run out. Love.

Supplies

school supplies

Before the school year started, we did a massive purge of supplies from last year. Everything seemed to be half broken, out of ink, or maimed in some way. We kept a few things that were still in good condition (such as scissors) and just started over new.

For us, I like having supplies that are JUST for school. Otherwise they just get scattered around the house, and we end up losing them or a certain baby ends up eating them when he finds them in a place that’s too easy for him to reach.

Here are a few good tools for supplies organization. The original boxes that they come in can be nice to keep, however, I usually find they get broken sooner rather than later. These tools can help keep things a little more easily organized:

And here are some ideas I found around the web:

Paper Organization

paper organizer

When it comes to schooling, paper can be so OVERWHELMING. I know when Jack was in public school, I felt like he brought home a tree’s worth of paper every Friday.

With homeschooling, we have a little more flexibility with that. He has some work online, but I do like for him to do paperwork as well, so we do have some paper.

filing bin

We are using one of our lidded containers with file folders to keep track of paper work that we have to keep (or that we want to keep). I think have folders, binders, and places for paper to go is important.

I also think it’s helpful to go through paper at the end of the week and just recycle whatever you don’t need anymore.

I like having this three-tiered paper organizer where we can put work that needs to be done, work that needs to be graded/reviewed, and work that is complete.

Here are some other tools that you might need for organizing paper more effectively:

Here are some great ideas for paper organization:

Schedule and Routines

man with a white board

There are different philosophies with homeschooling, but with our family, it’s important to have a routine and schedule.

When Jack started with remote learning with his old school last year, we tried a few different methods. At first, I had a written out schedule like this:

  • 9:00 – Morning Meeting and Devotional
  • 9:30 – Math
  • 10:30 – Reading
  • 11:30 – Social Studies
  • 12:30 – Lunch and Recess
  • 1:30 – AMP

It took about one day for us to realize this was too strict. Jack was stressed out trying to get things done in a certain period of time, and he was under the impression that he could ONLY work on something during the time period I set out.

So instead, we found it worked best for us to just tell him what needed to be done, when we’d like him to start, and that he could have breaks when he needed.

We have continued that this year, and it works great!

So I suggest trying a few different methods for schedules. I think it’s good to have some kind of planner or schedule to put this in – as well as activities and events you might want to attend.

This TRU-RED Planner is great. Here are some other great options.

We recently got a big, giant whiteboard to put in our school area. It’s great for teaching concepts, but it’s also helpful for writing out schedules, tasks for the week, events, due dates, to-do lists, and more. We are all excited about it.

Here are some different schedule ideas I’ve found around the web:

Digital Organization

child on ipad on a desk

We live in a digital world, for better or for worse. There are a lot of really great, helpful apps out that that can help you be more organized with homeschooling.

In the state of Colorado, the homeschool laws are pretty easy to follow – but one of them is that we have to homeschool for a certain number of days/hour per year. I decided to download an attendance app where I could easily track it and export a document if I needed to provide proof of attendance. Here are a few different attendance apps you can consider.

Cozi is a free app that is specifically designed for family organization, and it works great for homeschool. The whole family can be synced up in one account.

We use Chrome on all of our computers and devices, and I’ve found that adding folders to the bookmark bar for things that our kids need to access regularly make it a lot easier. In addition, I have created an email address for each of my kids, so I make a separate Chrome profile for each of them so it’s even easier to keep things straight.

I found a few other apps that might be helpful for digital organization and homeschooling:

Other School You May Enjoy:

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