It seems every couple years in our homeschool, I have to change my strategy and systems. And this year with my first high schooler, that change led me to using a homeschool checklist for my son to track his daily and weekly assignments.
Over the years, I have mostly been the one to keep track of what my kids do every day. Then over time, I have given them more responsibility over that.
I have used accordion folders, spreadsheets, printed spreadsheets, online project trackers, teacher planners, student planners,….all the things.
The past few years, we have used Asana for keeping lists of daily work, and that has worked quite well. I still use this system successfully with my middle child.
My oldest, however, began not checking it this year. He just wrapped up 9th grade and is mostly independent in his schooling. But during this year, he began just doing the next lesson in his books and not paying attention to the actual lists I had created for him.
With some subjects, this worked fine. But I began noticing he wasn’t completing some of the little assignments I had added. Like a short essay after completing a unit (not in the book), or an extra small project for one chapter, when I had allowed him to skip that in other chapters.
So I began getting on to him about not checking his assignment lists in Asana. But that didn’t seem to help much.
Turns out these assignment lists work, but he needed more check-ins and accountability, and a slightly different approach.
Homeschool daily checklist
So I set out on creating some accountability, and out came my homeschool weekly checklist. Really, it’s just a page we can write out what he needs to do each week so he can reference it and stay on track without me nagging him every day.
It especially helps him manage other things in his life, extra school assignments or projects, and his ever-increasing responsibilities.
There are places for him to write his assignments and other happenings during the week, a place to write down the books he’s read, and and a habit tracker. The habit trackers can be used for exercise, water, music/sports practice, or other school-ish things like reading a book daily, or tracking school subjects.
One more section I added to this page is for setting goals and tracking progress on various projects or assignments. This was a particularly helpful thing for him.
My son is in TrailLife USA, so this section helped him with setting weekly goals for his badge work. It was also great for bigger projects like research papers, book reading, and household projects.
And I’ll be honest, we still use Asana for a lot of his daily homeschool assignment tracking, but this paper gives that extra little bit of help to stay on track each week.
What we include on our checklist
Here are the basic parts of our weekly homeschool checklist:
- Daily lists for assignments and events
- Habit tracker checklist
- Project goals and progress
- Books read
The secret sauce of the homeschool checklist
Of course, when you are trying to train your kids, follow-up is key. So when homeschooling independent students, they need accountability. This is the secret sauce of this homeschool checklist.
If you are not regularly checking in with your kids, making sure they are completing their assignments, helping them to evaluate their progress, and setting goals, then the checklist will not work.
The checklist is a tool to help you communicate and help your student keep track of things. It is not a replacement for you, but a tool to help you.
Of course, over time with training and attention, your student will hopefully be able to use this planning page as a tool without you. But until they have the executive functioning skills and responsibility on their own, they will need your help. Just like how they have learned other things, like walking and reading.
Also, students who are reluctant to use a tool like this will need extra oversight. Not every strategy or system works for every child. Be sure to stick with what works, and also stay within their current abilities.
Now back to what we do.
Each week, I sit down with my son, talk about how the week went, go over his checklist, help him evaluate his progress toward his goals, and talk about the expectations for the following week.
This not only helps him stay on track, but also helps me stay in the loop. And it gives us a time to connect, not just on schoolwork, but anything we need to.
I keep this time short and informal. Just a quick time to go over things.
Grab your free printable homeschool checklist
You could use a random spiral notebook and write out a daily or weekly checklist yourself, but why go to that trouble? I have already designed a great page for you, and included it here for FREE! This is the exact page I designed and use with my son.
- One simple page
- Organize all assignments
- Set weekly goals
- Monitor progress
- Track habits or practice
- Keep a booklist
- FREE download!
If you like this…
After I created this page and used it with my son, I decided I really should just take this page and develop a whole student planner around it. So I no longer will have to print out a new page each week. Just buy the planner once, and use it throughout the year.
But this planner doesn’t just have the basic weekly homeschool checklist pages, but it also includes monthly overviews, calendars, and assignment lists. It has pages for tracking booklists, classes, other activities, their favorite things, and so much more!
Interested in learning more about the Footpath Student Planners? Check back – they are coming very soon!
The homeschool checklist
I hope that this post has given you some encouragement to try a new system in your homeschool. Something that can help your kids become more independent, and a way to set up accountability in an easy way. A homeschool checklist is a tool that will help you do all this in your homeschool as your kids grow and change.
What do you include in your daily homeschool checklist?
Related posts
Organizing Daily Homeschool Work so Your Kids Know What to do
Automate Your Homeschool Year by Creating This One Thing
