Back-to-School Planning: Using the Foundations and Essentials Planning Guides

By Brianna Virden

August 15, 2023 2 min read

Foundations and Essentials Planning Guides in use

August is in full swing! As a homeschool mom, I’ve spent the last several weeks diving deep into back-to-school planning. In addition to curriculum and school supply purchases, I have started the process of preparing and organizing materials and lesson planning.

Foundations Online Supplement Planning Guide for Level C alongside a young user engaged with an elearning activity.

I use Logic of English with my three school-aged kids; two will be in Foundations and one will be in Essentials for the 2023-24 school year. We use a combination of printed materials and the corresponding eLearning courses. Having the flexibility to switch between using the scripted, open-and-go teacher’s manuals and using the online instructional videos and activities has been a game changer for us. From the moment I started combining the printed curriculum with the eLearning courses, I felt that the effectiveness of each lesson and the ease with which it was delivered increased significantly. I didn’t think it could get any better… until I started using the planning guides.

Essentials Online Planning Guide for Unit 1

You see, I am part of an ever growing group of home educators who also maintain full-time employment. My husband and I both work from home and both contribute to our children’s education. Because of this, planning is key to our homeschool success. The planning guides for Foundations and Essentials have taken the legwork out of my LOE planning process.

The activities in each lesson are broken down by title. It is easy to match the titles in the planning guides with the titles in both the book and the online course.

Legend of icons communicating available format throughout the planning guide tool

There are icons indicating if the instruction or activity is included in the book, online or both. This makes it easy to keep track of the portions that need to be completed by me versus the portions where I have a choice between teaching the section myself, using the online component, or choosing to use both for reteaching or review. Then, I can clearly see where extra practice exists in an online activity that doesn’t show up in the teacher’s manual.

To prepare for back-to-school, I have printed the planning guides for each of my kids’ levels, hole punched them, and put them into a binder. Now, as we complete each lesson, I can jot down notes, such as the date of completion, and I can check off each topic or activity for that day.

Want to add the planning guides to your list of homeschool hacks? You can download them for free at the links below! They are also available for download within each eLearning course.