Easy Homeschool Lesson Planning With Google Sheets + FREE Template

I pictured and perceived homeschool lesson planning as a process of writing the plan out for the year, following it, executing it and feeling successful. But that’s not how things happened for me.

In fact, it was this approach where I felt like a homeschooling mom planning failure within just the first two weeks of homeschooling.

How is it possible to write out lesson plans of what you see happening for the month or year all while feeling like nothing that you hoped for is getting done! It became defeating for me.

I also felt like my approach to life and homeschooling needed an adjustment.

For us, adapting life to homeschool says that homeschooling is primary and you fit all that happens to life in it. This is impossible for us. Adapting homeschooling to life is dealing with real emotions and arguments between siblings all while homeschooling. It’s late nights of church ministry. Or maybe not feeling well while having a week to recover. 

But then there’s still my question, how do you create a homeschool lesson plan so it doesn’t create this feeling of defeat and failure?

I came up with a system to help me in what I wanted to see. First of all, I needed a a prayerful approach and plan to choosing curriculum.

Then I wondered how long different curriculum took throughout the year based on their suggested timeline and what I saw happening. This is where my year-at-a-glance homeschool lesson planing using Google Sheet came in.

Let me be honest here… what I also wanted to see with this yearly overview of lesson planning, is that we didn’t have to pull out the math book all year long if we missed time off due to not feeling well, a day of that we just needed, an unscheduled play-date, or if we had a vacation time in mind. I know myself and a break to reset and refresh is what I need to be a better homeschooling mom throughout the many years that I desire to homeschool which is why we don’t homeschool in summer.

Homeschool Lesson Planning With Google Sheets

So, I designed a template in Google Sheets that I use year and after, and it’s the perfect start to planning our homeschool curriculum layout for the year.

This overview is not a lesson plan to follow or be a law. More-so, this overview gives you an idea of how things work together, timelines, etc. and if you’re somewhat on track to finishing when you would like to. For example: Do you need to slow down or speed up? Do you need to add a 5th day in the week of math for a period of time to catch up?

From here, this year-at-a-glance lesson plan is not what I use to record what we actually do. I use a separate hard copy homeschool lesson planner for that. It becomes more of a log or record book indicating our actual work. These two pair really well together as I occasionally compare the two in the year to see if we’re on track, what we’ve changed, etc.

If you’d like a FREE template of my homeschool lesson plan using Google Sheets, head on over here to WildlyAnchored.com and grab it!