I was never going to be one of those people. You know the ones, those Happy Planner people. What was that thing anyway? Three big boxes for each day? What would I ever use that for?
No lines, no nicely divided subject areas for my homeschool planner. The thing was useless as far as I was concerned.
I watched my friends joyfully set up these pretty decorated pages and thought, “I don’t have time for that. That would never help me.”
Oh’ how wrong I was!
About the time I began to be frustrated with my system for my third grader, I also began to be frustrated by the planner which had served me well for over three years.
With added students, meal plans, dance schedules, and other commitments it was simply no longer serving my needs. So, I turned to Pam and Plan Your Year for Help.
Pam made me a custom form for my homeschool planning and suggested I try the Happy Planner as a way to bind the forms I would be using. I choose a Big Happy Planner Kit.
I wanted to start my year in July, the month I begin homeschooling and this allowed me to make my own calendars. It also came with a few extra stickers and a folder.
After a few weeks of thinking and brainstorming, I became a Happy Planner believer. This was the answer to my frustrations with multiple homeschooling notebooks, forgotten appointments, shopping lists, meal planning scraps of paper, or no meal plan at all.
How I set up my happy planner for homeschool and life
Note: You will need the Happy Planner Punch. It is absolutely essential for customizing your planner for your life.Â
Section 1: SchedulesÂ
Plan Your Year Weekly Plan: This page is where I keep all of our weekly commitments such as co-op, piano, and church. It helps me to see at a glance where other appointments and field trips can go without double booking.
Plan Your Year 2017-2018 School Calendar: This one-page calendar is perfect for blocking out the weeks and days I plan to take off from school.
Other work related or homemaking schedules: I have our Morning Time Release Schedule here and plan to add a loop schedule for cleaning the house.
Section 2: School recordsÂ
Plan Your Year At a Glance 2017: Perfect as an attendance calendar. Nice big boxes for those beautiful “X”s that signify a completed school day.
Plan Your Year Long Range Planning 2017: The idea to use this as a way to plan out trips and future field trips came from the Plan Your Year FB group. I loved the idea so much I collected all booklets from the zoo, park, and art museum and added the events we might attend to the appropriate month.
Plan Your Year Vision: This page is a must-have. If it isn’t with me, I will forget what I am working towards.
Plan Your Year Course of Study: Have one for each student. This has been so helpful to work through this year. It made making their planning books a cinch.
Plan Your Year Goals Worksheet: Have one for each student. I asked each child for input as I made their goal page. I keep them here to refer to a few times a year as we check to see how we are doing.
Other: Grade sheets and full semester lesson plans also fit in this section.
Check out the video tour of this post:
Section 3: Morning time plans
I used to have a separately bound Happy Planner for all. the. Morning. Time. Plans. It was never in the right place at the right time. So, in the spirit of, “One Book to Rule Them All,” I added our current Morning Time Plans to my Happy Planner.
Section 4: Other printable plansÂ
Currently, this section has the Sir Cumference Bundle from Math Geek Mama. However, I can see adding a month from Exploring Nature with Children, a NaturExplorers book or a Chalk Pastel book to this section as well.
Section 5: Memory work
If you use memory work for a co-op or you memorize passages of scripture, Shakespeare or Hymns, this is the section for that. No more separate folder. No more hunting around for your memory work because you had guests last weekend and you wanted to neaten up your living room and can’t remember where you put it.
Calendar sections
Now to tackle those three pesky boxes for each day. I have all these calendar pages. I already have a Weekly Plan page for homeschooling that I keep in the middle of the weekly spread along with a meal planning sheet. What will I use these boxes for? I don’t have that many appointments!
I decided to use these sections as a journal/planner.
Top box: When I do my Bible reading for the day, I like to copy a verse or two. I do this for the same reason I make my children do copy work. It helps me to really think about what I have read. I don’t have long, so sometimes one verse is all I do.
Bottom box: Kids are funny! Family life is precious, but I am in the middle of the whirlwind of these little years and I know I will forget. This bottom box is where I add a snippet from our day. A conversation, something funny, a joke, Peter’s first tooth, someplace we visited.
Middle box: This is a catch-all. Sometimes it is a pretty sticker that adds to my page. Yes, I got into decorating more than I ever thought I would! Appointments, to-do lists, a special memory, a quote, all of these fit here.
The margin: This is also a catch all depending on the week. It usually holds my prayer list, but other subjects include family journal overflow, weekly to-do, a packing list, and sometimes nothing at all.
Notes
This section is in the back and holds blank lined paper for random notes or ideas, book lists, and logs. You can put anything here.
Decorations
Having a Happy Planner is way more fun if you decorate it. This has been such a fun project for me. My oldest daughter and I sometimes sit together and share ideas on how to decorate our pages. It is a special time for us to connect and share ideas.
Here are some resources I have used to decorate mine:
me & my BIG ideas PPSV-13 Create 365 The Happy Planner Sticker Value Pack Planner – BIG Color Story – 459 Stickersme & my BIG ideas PPSV-17-2048 Create 365 The Happy Planner Sticker Value Pack Planner, Classic Faith
me & my BIG ideas PPSV-15 Create 365 The Happy Planner Sticker Value Pack Planner, BIG Memory Planning
me & my BIG ideas PPSV-06 Create 365 The Happy Planner Sticker Value Pack Planner, Mom Life, 1439 Stickers
Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pens, .3mm, Metal Clad Tip, 20-Pack, Assorted (334SB20BK)
Wonderful Washi Japanese Decorative Paper Craft Tape – Bright Collection (Set of 20 rolls) Extra Long (32 feet!)
Crayola 12ct Watercolor Colored Pencils
Current Stickers
Ready to make the switch to “One Book to Rule Them All?” Go for it! Make it your own! It doesn’t have to look like mine! I would love to see some of yours.
me & my BIG ideas BOX-112 Create 365 The Happy Planner Box Kit 12 Month Undated, Big Flower Pop Bigme & my BIG ideas Create 365 The Happy Planner Expander Rings, GoldMe & My Big Ideas MAMPUNB.1 PLN The Happy Plannerme & my BIG ideas MONB-01 The Happy Planner Big Planner Edition,6 Month
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OHHH my goodness. I feel like the rain cloud that is home school planning (of which your wonderful home school planning pages are the silver lining) has been cleared away and now I can finally see the FULL light! 😀 THANK YOU for sharing! 🙂
You are so welcome! Hope you enjoy planning your year!
(That is, Pam’s pages, I see now that this was written by a guest writer…Well done, Jessica, and thank YOU!) 🙂
Love this post, Jessica! <3
Thank you! 🙂
I saw your Sir Cumference plans, what is the website you obtained them from?
Never mind, I found the answer in the show notes. Somehow I missed it on my initial look.
will you have one of these available at the GC HS conference in Gville?? I want to touch and flip through to make sure it’s a fit. I have one that I am using this year but it’s A LOT to organize each week.
Yes! I will have my happy planner at Greenville and Ft. Worth and Cincinnati! Hope to see you there!
Going to Michael’s planner sale in the morning! Glad I remembered this post before I bought a non-customizable planner, especially since I have Plan Your Year for my own pages? Thanks Jessica! And thanks Pam for having such organized resources, sometimes too much clutter and choices freezes me up and I can’t decide!
Are there 2 sizes in these planners? I ordered the one through the link, but it is smaller. The one pictured has 11 rings in the binding, but the largest I’ve found is 9. I was hoping to fit standard paper in the planner, as shown.
I’m perplexed.
There are 3 sizes (mini, classic and big)
Thank you for sharing! My question is, do you carry it with you places? If you go to the Dr office or if you need to make an appointment sonewhere how do you handle that? I was planning to put together an arc disc planner but love the idea of combining both life and homeschool. This just made so much sense! Thanks again!
I put appointments in my phone calendar. Then as they come up by week I put them in my planner where they are more in front of my face and I am less likely to forget them. Also, with the electronic calendar you can go farther out… like those dentist appointments every six months that often end up outside the calendar range.
I loved this post! Want to hear something awesome? I just sat down yesterday with my Happy Planner and thought ‘how can I use this to hs plan?’ I couldn’t figure it out! And today God led me to your post! Woohoo!
Question-I have the middle size-not the biggest size. I’m wondering about shrinking the planning pages down to fit and, as long as I feel there’s enough room, trying that. I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether that would work before I go to all that work to do it. ????
Yes, there have been others to do it. We think the number is either 87 or 84. I hope that helps!
Your planner is beautiful. When do you make entries in your journal portion?? I’ve got nine kids, homeschooling 7 this year and I don’t see how I could make the time…even though I’d love too. Also do you have a meals/grocery section and a housekeeping section? Bills/bookkeeping section?
I sometimes make them right before I go to bed. It is usually less than five sentences. Sometimes there just isn’t time so I use a sticky note to write a reminder and stick it on the day. Sometimes they stay there for weeks. When I find a spare moment, I write like a mad woman! It isn’t ideal, but it does make sure some things get put down. I have a separate, very disposable, very messy notebook for meals and shopping lists. It is smaller and easier to stick in my purse and doesn’t clutter up my other planner. What is this housekeeping you speak of? 😛 Lol… For bookkeeping we rely on Excel, so it is not in my planner. I hope this helps! And keep on keeping on! You are doing GREAT!