Bullet Journaling for the Montessori Homeschool

This last year I created our tracking tool for our Montessori Homeschool and really was able to utilize it well. It is perfect for most of our tracking.  It has a tab for each of the five main subjects, all the lessons (AMI heavy; Info Montessori is our main Curriculum source but we have supplemented with books and other free websites – all of it is listed on the Overview Tab), a Tab mapping together Montessori Benchmarks with State Standards, a Sequence Overview Tab, Attendance Tab, and an Activities Tab. It was definitely a labor of love. You can check it out here. Feel free to save a copy in Google Drive and make it your own!

This spring I found myself still reaching for pen and paper to record observations, brainstorm, make to-do lists, and to do part of my planning. I was trying to do everything from one bullet journal (gardening, my personal stuff, and the girl’s homeschool) and it spilled over to random notebooks and loose paper. Needless to say that got messy quick. I have decided to give homeschool and gardening their own bullet journals.

My homeschool bullet journal is nothing fancy. Just a space for weekly lesson/presentations checklist, to-do’s, observations, brainstorming, brain dumps, unit planning, etc. I just wanted to keep it simple and somewhat attractive so that I will actually use it. I’ll show you my spread and how to set one up. Before setting yours up, sit down and decide what all is need for your homeschool planner. For me, most things are in my online tracker. You may need to add a spread for yearly attendance, events, curriculum tracking or other points of interest to yours.

You want to start with an index. This way, you will know where everything is at a glance. You will add to this as you go on so leave a few pages blank.

I would do any yearly or quarterly spreads before your weekly spreads. This is my weekly spread. I have a quick list for each day of initial presentations and then I have a to-do list. I also put a little tracker for sound games and oral language work at the top right for a few weeks. Since taking this picture, I added the tot’s trays or presentations in another color to the list. I like everything in one place instead of having multiple pages to check out for each day. I also like having the calendar for quick reference at the top. I thought I’d like starting with Monday so that I could focus on the school week but it is throwing me off. I may revert to a traditional calendar flow after the next six weeks.

After that I will just add my observations, brainstorms, etc. in rapid recording style as needed. When I do my detailed planning for the next six weeks I will just pick up with the next page and log it in the index.

See? Simple.

Love this? Other Montessori Homeschool Planning Posts that Might be of Interest:

1. Six Week Detailed Lesson Outline Montessori Homeschool Preschool (Montessori 3-6)
2. Our Language Sequence for Early Writing and Reading
3. Planning for Year Two of the 3-6 Montessori Classroom at Home – Materials List
4. Phonetic Readers for Beginning Readers – Our Curated List
5. Montessori Homeschool Record Keeping
6. 2020-2021 Year In Review