The Mindful Homeschool Life Planner: A Full Tour of What’s Inside

The newest planner is here! This isn’t just a fresh cover or a slight tweak, it’s a full upgrade. It includes everything you’ve come to rely on in the original Homeschool Planner, along with brand new pages, thoughtful design updates, and a built-in planning guide that helps you create a more intentional homeschool year, from the big picture all the way down to the daily details. Here’s a closer look at what’s inside and how it works.

When you first open the planner, you’ll see a table of contents. It doesn’t capture everything due to space limitations, so I’m giving you this walkthrough to show you some of the newer additions and explain how they’re meant to support your homeschool year.

The planner is divided into six main sections. Each section begins with a simple reference page that outlines what’s included and how to use it. These pages are your anchor points, and I highly recommend using adhesive tabs here so you can flip to them quickly. It’s one of those small setup steps that makes a big difference once you're in the middle of a school term and need to find something fast.

Each section serves a different purpose, and together they give you a complete system—not just for lesson planning, but for goal setting, tracking, student management, and even reflecting on your year. This isn’t a cookie-cutter planner. It’s meant to work with your life, your homeschool style, and your unique kids.

Getting Started

The Organizer is your first section and it's basically your school admin area. You’ll find a mix of setup tools for the year ahead, along with practical trackers for all the important behind-the-scenes details.

Your first page spread in this section is your Homeschool Checklist, This is where you begin before the school year starts. It walks you through the key steps of getting prepared, including legal requirements, curriculum planning, prepping your home, prepping your family, and finally, preparing yourself and tying up any last details.

Next comes the Homeschool Style series of pages. These walk you through the major categories of homeschool styles, help you set up a profile that identifies your own personal homeschool style(s), then gives you suggestions on how to use or customize some of the pages to fit your unique mix.

After that, there’s a page spread designed to help you narrow down curriculum options and list out your resources for the year. From there, you move into your admin tracking pages, where you can organize everything from online accounts and passwords to field trips, network contacts, and expenses.

Student Planning

The Student Profile section is your hub for everything student-related. It includes space to create personalized student profiles for up to four kids, track learning preferences, build reading lists, and maintain academic records throughout the year.

It begins with an introduction to student portfolios, along with a checklist to help you get started, whether you’re building them for keepsake purposes or for meeting state requirements.

From there, you’ll dive into the Learning Style Toolkit pages. These start with a simple overview of the four main learning styles, followed by a closer look at each one to help you identify where your kids might fit best. Once you’ve figured that out, you’ll use the Student Profile pages (for up to four kids) to combine learning styles, personality traits, strengths, interests, and ideal learning conditions. This gives you a clearer picture of how to create a more supportive and personalized learning environment - one of the biggest advantages we have as homeschoolers.

You’ll also find a page spread that lists 20 common challenges homeschoolers face, along with practical strategies that can help things run a little smoother.

The final part of this section is all about tracking student records. You’ll find pages for reading lists (four included, with more available in the free download), attendance, grades, and report cards.

Navigating High School

The High School Roadmap is similar to the Student Profile section in that it helps you track important details for your kids, but this one is focused entirely on the high school years. It’s designed to ease some of the overwhelm that tends to show up once you enter this final stretch.

This section walks you through how to map out your teen’s courses over all four years. It includes a list of common milestones to expect by grade, plus guided questions to help you and your teen start thinking through post-high school plans: college, trade school, gap year, or whatever path they might take.

You’ll also find a transcript builder you can maintain right inside your planner. That way, when graduation rolls around, most of the heavy lifting is already done.

And again, I've included pages for up to 4 kids - even if you have 4 in high school.

The Big Picture

The Plan is the fourth section, and it’s all about high-level planning. This is where you zoom out and look at the bigger picture. It includes some of my favorite pages for that overhead view—Year Ahead, Term Goals, and a new addition: Academic Goals and Mindmap.

At first glance, the Year Ahead and Term Goals pages may look simple, but don’t let that fool you. They’re incredibly versatile and powerful tools for setting meaningful direction throughout your year.

The new Academic Goals and Mindmap pages are designed to help you plan out major focus areas and keep track of key skills for each subject. You can also use them to note any learning gaps you want to address, which makes this a great tool for strategic planning across multiple grade levels. 4 copies included for making profiles for up to 4 kids.

(I have tutorials in progress for these pages and will link to them right here once they’re ready.)

Detailed Scheduling

The Schedule is the fifth section. Once your year is set up, this is where you’ll spend most of your time.

You’ll start with five unique monthly pages to help you organize each month, followed by your weekly lesson planning pages.

The Monthly Dashboard helps you set clear goals, while the Monthly Focus pages give you space to define your intentions and priorities. There’s also a large two-page monthly calendar that’s completely blank and undated. You decide whether your week starts on Sunday or Monday, and you choose the month your school year begins.

The Month at a Glance page gives you extra room to map out events, tasks, or notes for the month. You also have a Daily Habit Tracker, which you can use any way you want to track habits, routines, or anything else on a day-by-day basis. (I have a blog post full of creative ways to use this page coming soon.)

Finally, you’ll find your Weekly Planning pages grouped together at the end of this section. That’s intentional. As the monthly pages grew, it made more sense to move the weekly spreads into their own dedicated space. This keeps them free from clutter and distractions, and it makes it easier to flip through your weeks without the monthly pages getting in the way.

A Space For Reflection

The final section is called Review and Reflect. This is where you’ll find your Quarterly Review pages, giving you a chance to check in, evaluate, and reset your focus four times a year. You also get an extended Year in Review page to help you capture the story of your homeschool year through simple, thoughtful prompts.

A few blank journaling pages are included at the end for anything extra you need to jot down—notes, reflections, memories, or whatever comes up along the way.

You’ll also find a QR code in this section that links to your bonus download set of printables.

A Free Bonus

Your bonus download includes pages you can use in portfolios, pages tailored to specific homeschooling styles, and a few extras pulled from the planner that you may find helpful—like additional reading lists and alternate versions of the Term Planning and Report Card pages for families who prefer a four-term schedule instead of six.

Blog post on four vs six term planning

If you're ready for a homeschool planner that goes beyond checkboxes and helps you build a more intentional, personalized, and manageable year, you can grab your copy of the Mindful Homeschool Life Planner on Amazon. You'll find it on sale through the month of June.