How To Use The Flexible Homeschool App To Plan Quickly & Easily Your Homeschool

As a full-time working mom who is homeschooling her kids, I am always on the hunt for new systems and tools to help me stay organized in a simple way. 

The Flexible Homeschool App is a digital planning tool that promises to be structured enough to keep you on track and flexible enough to handle life. 

I’ve used this digital planner in the past, but a lot has changed in the past few years. I was excited when the team reached out and asked me to share with you how to use the Flexible Homeschool App to plan your homeschool.

While this article is sponsored by the Flexible Homeschool app, all thoughts and opinions are mine. I’ll show you how to quickly plan your homeschool using the Flexible Homeschool app (as detailed as I can!) and create homeschool printable reports.

What Is The Flexible Homeschool App?

Flexible Homeschool App is a web scheduling app for homeschoolers that can be accessed on any internet-connected device (so long as it’s not ancient). 

It is designed to help you plan and track your family’s homeschool progress.  

What Makes The Flexible Homeschool App Unique? 

It was developed by homeschoolers for homeschoolers. 

Phillip and Lanaya Gore have been homeschooling their four children for more than 10 years, which means they understand that homeschooling needs to be flexible! 

They designed this homeschool app to work with us as we juggle homeschool, extracurriculars, sickness, our career, and whatever else sends our well-laid plans flying out the window. 

Why Use A Digital Homeschool Planner? 

As much as I love using a paper planner, a digital planner has some key elements you can not copy on paper. 

A digital planner allows you to adjust your plan on the fly without scratching things out and re-writing. 

More importantly, as long as I have my phone on me, I can access our homeschool plans. I can quickly see what we have going on, no matter where I am, on the way home from work, at the library, running errands, etc.  

A digital planner is a great way to teach your kids to be independent in their homeschool.

Lastly, the Flexible Homeschool App includes our homeschool resources which means I can grab those last-minute supplies from the store with a glance to see what we need. 

Using The Flexible Homeschool App For Homeschool Planning

A few years ago, I tested the Flexible Homeschool app to see if it would fit my life at that time. You can read all about our thoughts and review here as well as how to set up your account, add your children, and add resources into the planning app.  

In the past two years, life has changed for all of us in a big way. Many working moms are jumping into homeschooling for the first time, which can be overwhelming. 

If you are brand new to homeschooling, I recommend reading about how homeschooling works before digging into planning and organizing homeschool reports. 

One of the great things about homeschooling is how flexible it can be. You can homeschool in the mornings, evenings, afternoons, holidays, weekends- whatever works for your family. 

As such, there are many ways to plan your homeschool. You may prefer to plan your homeschool yearly, use a weekly plan or use printable checklists.

Let’s talk about how to set up and use these plans using the Flexible Homeschool App. 

Planning Your Workflow With Flexible Homeschool App

Before we get started, it is important to understand how to plan your workflow with the Flexible Homeschool App. 

I recommend logging into your account and following along with this instructional video. This video will walk you through all the basic steps of how the app works.

Adding my daughter’s grade 12 coursework took about 30 minutes total. Once you understand the way the program works, it is fast and easy. 

Don’t forget you can always edit the information later. 

How To Plan Your Homeschool Year

After you set up your workflow, the next step is deciding how you will run your homeschool year. 

Planning your homeschool year involves deciding a loose homeschool plan. 

• Will you homeschool year-round?
• Will you follow the traditional schedule from September – June? 
• Will you homeschool for 4 weeks and take 1 week off?
• Or will you follow a calendar year from January – December? 

Remember, homeschooling is flexible. The best way to find out what your homeschool yearly plan will look like is through trial and error.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself trying different methods until you find one that sticks. I recommend taking note of what works and what doesn’t, and then making adjustments as needed.

The Flexible Homeschool App makes planning and adjusting your homeschool year easy. 

After you log in, click the New School Year option from the upper right corner. Enter the start of the year and end of the year. 

Next, set the number of Weeks for a Term. Your terms can be any length you decide. You can just schedule one long term of 36 weeks, but that may seem overwhelming to look at your homeschool as one solid chunk! 

I used 3 terms because that made sense to me. (3 terms of 12 weeks each for a total of 36 weeks.) You might choose to do 4 terms of 9 weeks for a total of 36 weeks. It’s really up to you how you wish to organize your School Year.

Here is an example of what this looked like for our American Literature course. 

With this plan in place, I knew how many lessons she would be doing each 12-week term and the entire homeschool year. 

How To Plan Your Homeschool Week

I am a big believer in weekly planning being the key to never missing a deadline and knowing exactly what you have on your plate. 

When it comes to homeschool planning, I recommend picking one day a week to sit down and review what is coming up in the week ahead. 

I always check my weekly plan on Sunday. The Flexible Homeschool App makes this easy to do. Once you’ve logged into your account, it will automatically bring you to the tracking page. 

Here you can see what is coming up for the week. It’s a great time to make sure you have the homeschool books and supplies you need. 

It’s also important to make any changes or adjustments that need to be made to your weekly plan. For example, did you end up getting called in for an extra shift this week? Will you need to shift the homeschool lessons to a different day? 

You can make these adjustments easily in the app by choosing “edit” from the tracking page and then choosing the action you need from the drop-down menu. (See the photo below for an example) Lastly, click update, and you are set for the week! 

How To Use Weekly Labels For Daily Planning

Weekly Labels are the latest addition to the Flexible Homeschool App. These labels are how I could schedule my daughter’s homeschool work to be completed on certain days of the week.

These labels make it easy to plan your homeschool day and break up homeschool subjects over the week.

For example, looking at my daughter’s plan, you can see that on Wednesday, she does 5 courses. They are orange because I have them marked “do next.”

If you need to adjust the weekly labels, simply click the “Edit” button while in the Tracking section. Select the action “Edit Weekday Labels.” Alter that week’s labels. Then click the “Update” button.

How To Create And Use Checklists

Checklists are one of the best ways to teach your children to do their homeschool work independently. 

Once you have all of your information added into the Flexible Homeschool App, creating weekly checklists is easy. 

Log into your account and choose your child’s account. This should open up to the “tracking: view”, if not, just click on tracking in the upper left corner. 

You should see the current term and week along with all the schoolwork assigned for the week on your screen. 

As an example, you can see my daughter’s school work for term 1, week 1.  

Clicking a School Work item’s “Show Info” button reveals its General Instructions and its attached Resources. This is a useful reminder, especially for older kids who do more independent work. 

I have edited the week to make sure that all of Monday’s work is marked “do next” and shows orange. Now she has a visual checklist for Monday. 

Follow these steps to create your own checklist:

1. From your student view, choose “Edit” from the right side. 
2. Next, choose an action > pick “do next” from the drop-down menu. 
3. Choose the day and click update.

Now you have created a visual checklist for your child to do next. For more information on how to print these checklists for your kids, read the step-by-step guide.  (You can see my example below)

As they complete assignments, they can check them off the list. If your child uses the app themselves, the assignment will turn from orange to red when marked complete. If they are using a printable checklist, you’ll need to go in and mark them complete on the app for it to track.

I recommend double-checking their work if they are new to working on their own. If you have teens, reviewing weekly might be best to ensure they are on track and understand the work. 

Using The Flexible Homeschool App For Homeschool Reporting

While you are on the tracking page, it is good to add in any information you will need to show up on reports you create for your homeschool requirements. 

Remember, homeschool requirements are not the same for everyone. You can learn how to find your homeschool requirements here.

If you need to track your homeschool hours, you will want to make sure you fill out the “completion time.” Are you required to track homeschool days? Be sure to fill out the date. If you are creating detailed reports, you will want to fill out the “completed work” section. 

The great thing about this app is that you can choose how much information you want to fill in based on your homeschool requirements or peace of mind. 

In order to create a printable report, choose “reporting” from the right side and then choose “edit” from the left. Use the checkboxes to decide what you would like shown, then click update. 

Once you have the report formatted the way you wish, simply select print inside your browser (the browser, not the Flexible Homeschool App). Depending on which device and which browser you use, this could be slightly different. 

Is The Flexible Homeschool App For You?

Over the past 14 years of working and homeschooling, I’ve learned what works for one family doesn’t always work for another. There is no one size fits all digital planner.

Flexible Homeschool App is designed for busy moms who need a digital tool to help them get organized so they can focus on homeschooling their kids instead of freaking out over their schedule.

Flexible Homeschool App is for YOU if:

• You are homeschooling while dealing with whatever life throws at you
• You need to view your homeschool schedule on the fly
• You need to be structured to stay on track
• You have multiple children at different levels
• If you hate getting alerts screaming that you’re falling behind
• You need a planner that is designed around the pace of each child and the life of the family, not rigid dates and times on a calendar

Homeschool planning is essential to managing working and homeschooling.  If you are looking for a digital planner as flexible as your homeschool, be sure to check out the Flexible Homeschool App.

Take care,

Jen

PS. If you prefer a paper planner, check out my homeschool planner for working moms here.

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