A Daily Planner for Overcoming the OVERWHELM in the Homeschool Day
Does your child struggle with feeling overwhelmed by school work? My older son struggles with feeling OVERWHELMED with many things in life. We had a pretty good handle on it during the first half of this school year, but once we got back to school from time off for the holidays, the overwhelm reared its ugly head. He would come in the classroom in the morning, see his list of things to do, and meltdown.
It was time to review how we were structuring our day. I went through his list and calculated how long it would take to complete his individual tasks (if he would just start them!) and we were still on track for about 90-105 minutes of individual work per day. All tasks were at an appropriate level for him. So all good there!
So I decided to pull out a daily planner that we had tried in the fall, but had seemed to be, yet another thing to fill out each morning and we had gotten away from it. This time however, I unknowingly worded my instructions differently and it worked to calm him down and come up with a plan for his day.
The Planner
I looked at a few different daily planners aimed at increasing productivity in adults and then, I made a child-friendly one for our school day. I have made an editable version for you. These are the key components:
To have an awesome day, I will: This is to help your child remember some general things throughout the day that will keep him or her on track and feeling well. Our goals are the same every day for now. Our goals include: Stay focused and finish, Nourish my body with good things, Be joyful, and Be kind and helpful to my family. This section of the planner is editable so that you can put goals appropriate for what your child is working on.
Things I Get to Enjoy Today: This is to help your child keep an eye on the prize so to say. In our house, school work typically has to be done before extracurricular activities. This list changes each day for us.
Work Periods: Assign each school task to a work period.
Appointments is a good place to fill in anywhere you need to go that day, especially if it is out of the ordinary. That way your child knows what to expect from the day.
To-Do is where we write down chores for the day.
How We Use It 
In the fall when I coached my son through plugging his assignments into different work periods, I would ask him which assignment he wanted to put in his first work period. This would lead to complaints about which assignments he didn’t like among other things! Without realizing it, I changed my wording this time around and all of the sudden the planner became a great tool for us. This time, I went through his list and said where do you want to put math, where do you want to put reading, etc.
The first few days, he would start at the end of the day and plug things in there, putting them off as long as possible. Then as he ran out of spots at the end of the day, he would start to fill in the earlier work periods. After a few days though, he became much more strategic about it and plugged assignments in throughout his day based upon how much he liked them and how long they would take.
Once his planner is filled in, he can work through his assignments on his sheet and highlight them as he finishes them.
While the planner was the biggest piece of getting him back on track after break, we did make a couple other changes. One is I have started sitting at the table with him while he does his work sometimes. This isn’t always easy as I we have a younger child who I do a lot of direct instruction with, but it does calm him and hopefully we can slowly go back to him sitting on his own most of the time.
The other change is that he can now save his math corrections to do with dad in the evening as homework. He seems to like this. Maybe it is a good cop/bad cop kind of thing? I am the bad cop who tells him what is wrong and dad is the good cop who helps him fix them?? Whatever it is all of these changes combined seemed to have gotten us back on track and fought back that feeling of OVERWHELM.
If you think this planner might be helpful in your homeschool day, you can download it here!
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Randi Smith is a homeschool mom of two boys and a former speech-language pathologist. She blogs over at peanutbutterfishlessons.com about how she creates and uses multisensory learning materials to help her children overcome some learning challenges.
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