Unschooling

How We Plan Amazing Weeks as Unschoolers

Planning for unschoolers is often misunderstood.

When people think of planning, they often picture something rigid. Structured. Top-down. Something that happens to kids instead of with them.

When people think of unschooling, they imagine days with no plans, no structure, just living in the moment.

These things seem to be the opposite of each other, but I cannot disagree with that more strongly. Something I’m passionate about is showing how they can work together, and how a little planning can actually make unschooling more amazing, not less.

Planning doesn’t have to mean control. In fact, when done with respect and trust, it can do the opposite, it can support autonomy, not take it away. It can empower our children to own their learning and create the life they want, rather than just waiting for things to happen to them.

So yes, we’re unschoolers… and we still plan. It works really well for us.

Why Planning for Unschoolers Matters

I’ve talked before about the kind of planning I do to help me support the kids and generally organise my life, here. What I really want to talk about in this post, is the planning the kids do. Because it’s not just me! Especially as they have gotten older, I’ve been intentional about them always being part of the planning, and in control of their own learning and time.

We plan big goals and dreams yearly, but we also make plans together every week. Planning is a regular part of our life for many reasons.

Planning helps us:

• Stay aware of what we’re interested in
• Make time for the things that matter (especially when juggling the schedules of multiple children)
• Keep track of ideas we want to come back to
• Break big ideas down into smaller manageable steps
• Reflect on what we’ve been doing and how it’s going
• Feel a sense of ownership over our learning and life

But here’s the key: it’s not me planning for them. It’s them planning for themselves, with my support.

Empowerment, Not Control

When planning becomes a tool for control, it loses all its magic. It becomes like school.

Instead, we use planning as a tool for empowerment.

That means:

• The plan can change, and often does. We make plans to give us somewhere to start, but if we feel like going a different way when the time comes, that’s ok too!
• It starts with their ideas and priorities. That doesn’t mean we can’t suggest things, or surprise them with plans we know they’ll like too! But, the main focus is always their priorities, not ours.
• Every interest, idea, and plan is valued equally. Whether you like math courses or perfecting your cartwheel, go for it!
• There’s no pressure to tick boxes or perform. Your plans, your decision when you’re done.
• It’s about organising thoughts, not forcing learning. We plan with the aim of helping children grow into capable learners and meet their own goals, not to trick them into learning things we think they should.

Planning like this builds self-awareness, confidence, and trust. It teaches kids that their time, interests, and energy are valuable, and that they have a say in how they spend them. Of course, being part of a family often means some negotiation and compromise to make sure everyone gets their needs met in the week, and that’s ok too! You don’t always get to do what you want to do in every moment. But, when you sit down as a family for a bit of planning time, you send the message that everyone matters, and that their ideas and time are important.

What It Looks Like for Us

In our home, planning might look like:

• Sitting down at the start of the week to make some plans together (things we want to do as a family, events with our unschool group coming up, things we need to prepare for, and individual interests and projects)
• Writing down upcoming things on our wall calendar so everyone knows what’s happening
• Keeping a list of ideas/thoughts/questions on sticky notes, whiteboards, or in our planner pages
• Tracking progress on a big project, and planning next steps
• Working on (self-chosen) daily habits, and making time for self-care in our planning
• Talking about interests and ideas, and then planning projects that come from this
• Talking about priorities and working out how to manage our time

The things that all of these points have in common is that they are intentional, flexible, and are based on personal goals and interests.

Weekly Planning Time

The most valuable thing we do in terms of planning, is to sit down each week and actually intentionally come up with a plan. We like to do this of a Sunday afternoon. The girls open their planners and start filling in their ideas for the week ahead. Sometimes this is easy and they are full with so many ideas we can’t fit them in the week, other times there is some staring at the page for a while not knowing where to start.

The thing is, if we didn’t sit down to think about this, that’s exactly how our weeks could look. Sometimes full of things to do, jumping from one to the other, maybe not getting the main thing they wanted done because they were a bit all over the place. Other times, a whole lot of nothing, or ‘I’m bored’, and generally not knowing where to start or what to do.

Planning tackles these issues up front. It’s not about getting kids on a schedule, or controlling what they do. It’s simply a chance to get that swirl of ideas on paper, or give them somewhere to start with their week.

So, we sit, we chat, we share a snack, and we work out what we might want to do. The result is that we start the week energised and with a plan. Something to get started with. And that makes such a difference.

When you know where to start, the days flow better. The pressure is off. You know what you’re doing. Whether you continue with your plan for the week, or go off on a tangent because you got so into the first thing on your list, it doesn’t matter. Our plans are flexible. It’s just about being intentional.

Every Child Is Different

One of the things I love most is how planning looks different for each of my kids. One likes to plan what she is going to do each day of the week, ticking off each of her tasks she completes. Another prefers a loose list of ideas she can wake up and pick from depending on her mood and motivation. The others are somewhere in between.

And that’s the point. This is about them! They can plan in whatever way makes sense to their brains.

Our Planner

Over the years we’ve tried a few different planners for the kids. The thing is, planning for unschoolers looks different, and we always had to adapt them. We don’t want our year broken into terms, we don’t divide our life into subjects, and we actually want so much more than just simply planning our a days hour by hour.

Gradually, I started making the pages my kids wanted, exactly like they wanted. Options for each type of child from structured planning, to loose planning. Then I expanded into other things. Pages for discovering your interests, turning those interests into projects, tracking projects, brain dump pages, community and connection, habit tracking, self-care goals, gratitude journals, life skills practice plans, and on and on until we had everything we needed, our way.

The Self-Directed Life Planner was born out of the way our family unschools, how I support my kids, and the kind of flexible and empowering planning I think adds to the magic of unschooling, instead of taking away from it.

It’s not about telling them what to do. It’s about giving them the tools to do what they want.

We use it every week, and my kids have helped shape it every step of the way. If you’re looking for something to support your kids’ freedom and their growth, you can grab the planner we use right here.

Unschooling isn’t about floating through life with no direction. It’s about living with purpose, curiosity, and intention. And planning, when it’s flexible and personal, supports all of that. It gives kids the tools to dream big, stay focused on what matters to them, and make their ideas real.

In our home, it’s become one of the most empowering parts of our unschooling life. One of the things that sets us up to have those magical unschooling weeks where everything flows. We are intentional about out choice to unschool and how we spend our time, and it makes such a difference.