Week planner
Plan the week. Teach the day.
The planner is where your homeschool week takes visible shape. Schedule lessons for each child, check them off as you teach, and let Binder track the hours and days automatically.
Planner screenshots
Planning connects subjects, children, dates, lesson states, and later records.
How the planner works
Access the planner from Plan in the sidebar or top navigation. You'll see all lessons for the current week arranged in a grid: days across the top, children down the side. Each lesson card shows the subject color, title, duration, and completion state.
Week view
The default view. Shows the full Mon–Sun spread for one week. Navigate between weeks with the arrow buttons at the top. The current term's week number is shown in the header (e.g. "Week 12 of 36").
Day view
Focus on a single day across all children. Useful on heavy teaching days when you want a clear picture of everything scheduled and completed before you close out.
Month view
A calendar-style overview of the entire month. Lessons appear as colored dots on each day. Useful for spotting scheduling gaps or heavy weeks at a glance before you plan.
Term context
The planner is scoped to the active term. Lessons are always linked to a specific term so they appear in the right compliance reports, portfolio feeds, and progress exports at year's end.
Adding a lesson
Click any date cell in the week grid, or click the + button in the top toolbar. A lesson form slides in from the right. Fill in the fields below. You only need a child, a date, and a title — everything else is optional but useful for reports.
Child
Select which student this lesson is for. If you're planning a shared lesson (read-aloud, family history, science experiment), add it separately to each child who's participating, or use the Read-Aloud tool for a book you're reading together.
Subject
Tag the lesson with a subject for hours-by-subject reporting. If you haven't created subjects yet, go to Library → Subjects first. You can also create a new subject inline from the lesson form.
Date
The default is today. Click a different date or type one in. The lesson will appear on that date in the planner grid. You can schedule lessons days or weeks in advance.
Title
A short description of what you're teaching. Be as specific or as general as you want: "Chapter 4: Fractions," "Tuesday narration — Mr. Popper's Penguins," or just "Math." You can always add more detail in the notes field.
Duration
Optional, in minutes. Binder uses duration to calculate total instructional hours for compliance reporting. If you leave it blank, Binder estimates based on your account defaults. You can update it after the lesson is complete.
Notes
A rich-text field for anything extra: assignment instructions, reading passages, resource links, questions to ask during the lesson, or reminders. Notes support bold, bullets, links, and embedded file attachments.
Completing lessons
After teaching a lesson, mark it complete by clicking the checkmark on the lesson card in the planner, or from the lesson's detail page. You can also toggle completion from a child's profile page or from the Daily Tools hub.
When you complete a lesson, Binder:
- Records the exact completion timestamp
- Adds the lesson's duration to that day's instructional hours total
- Counts the day as a school day for attendance (if at least one lesson is completed)
- Updates the subject hours breakdown in progress reports
- Triggers any streak logic for the lesson-streak gamification badge
Completed lessons show with a checked state and a completion time. You can un-complete a lesson at any time — just click the checkmark again. This reverses all the above effects for that lesson.
Moving lessons
Plans change. Binder makes it easy to reschedule without re-entering anything.
Drag and drop
On desktop, drag a lesson card from one date cell to another. You can also drag across children — useful when a lesson was taught to a different child than originally planned.
Move button
Open the lesson detail and use the Move action to reassign it to a different date or child. Useful on mobile where drag-and-drop is less precise.
Moving a lesson updates all reports and attendance tracking automatically. The lesson's original date is replaced by the new one everywhere in Binder.
Copy the week Plus
If your week is mostly the same from one week to the next — the same subjects, the same rhythm — use Copy Week to duplicate the current week's lessons to the next. Click the button in the planner toolbar, confirm, and all planned lessons from this week appear in the next week in the same positions.
Copy Week duplicates lesson titles, subjects, children, durations, and notes. It does not copy completion state — next week's lessons start as pending. You can edit any copied lesson individually before the week begins.
Copy Week requires a Plus or Scholar plan. On Free, create recurring lessons manually; Plus unlocks bulk copy and automation.
Recurring lesson templates
A lesson template is a master lesson that generates scheduled lessons automatically on specific weekdays throughout the term. Templates are ideal for subjects that run every Mon/Wed/Fri or Tuesday/Thursday — you define the schedule once and Binder creates the lessons for you.
Creating a template
Go to Plan → Lesson Templates and click New Template. Fill in the child, subject, title, duration, and the days of the week it runs (any combination of Mon–Sun). Save the template.
Generating lessons
Once a template is active, Binder generates lessons for the current and upcoming weeks automatically. You can also manually trigger generation from the Templates list. Generated lessons appear in the planner like any other lesson and can be edited individually.
Pausing a template
Toggle any template inactive to pause generation without deleting it. Existing generated lessons remain. Reactivate it when you're ready to resume the schedule.
AI generation Plus
For any template, you can ask AI to draft a week of lessons based on the template's subject, the child's profile, and your homeschool method. Review the proposed lessons before saving — nothing is added without your approval.
AI lesson generation Plus
Binder AI can draft a week of lessons for a child from scratch. From the planner, click AI → Generate week, select a child and subject (or all subjects), and Binder generates lesson titles and descriptions tuned to your homeschool method and the child's grade level.
Generated lessons are presented as a proposal — a preview list where you can see each lesson, edit the title, change the date, or remove items you don't want. Nothing is added to your plan until you click Accept. This keeps you firmly in control of what actually gets scheduled.
AI generation uses your AI token budget (50,000 tokens/month on Plus). See Binder AI for the full token budget breakdown by plan.
Print the schedule
Click Print in the planner toolbar to generate a clean weekly schedule PDF. The PDF shows each child's lessons for the week in a printable table format with title, subject, and duration columns. Useful for posting on the fridge or keeping a paper backup of your plan.
The PDF is generated server-side and downloads immediately. It reflects the current week view — navigate to a different week first if you want to print a future or past week's schedule.