Todoist is my favorite app. If I could rave to anyone about an app without being considered totally weird, it would be Todoist. I use it all the time, for everything. School, home duties, shopping, kid’s chores, reminders, bills, project ideas, etc. It is my second brain, the half of my brain that actually works. It’s a great, practical tool to organize my many tasks into projects and action list as recommended by David Allen, founder of GTD (Getting Things Done).
For school I use todoist like an ordinary to do list. I add a project for each year, e.g. subjects 2020. Then I have subcategories for each subject (and each child for individual lessons).
Tasks in each subject include books we want to work through, ideas for projects or excursions, reading lists, etc. If I come across a great idea online I add a link to come back to later.
Todoist allows you to look back at completed tasks so it is great for record keeping also.
Unlike Homeschoolplanet you don’t have to schedule tasks to a particular day if you don’t want too. Scheduling however is very easy if there are things you want to get done or be reminded about on a particular day.
If you like to include action lists as recommended in GTD, it pays to subscribe to the premium version to be able to add labels. Not cheap for an app, but because I really use the app for everything, it is worth every cent. Actions labels relating to school could be “at computer”, “with Mum”, “independend work”, “outdoor activity”, “out of home”, etc.
If you prefer paper based lists you can easily print out your task list either as project lists, label (action)lists, today’s or the next 7 day’s tasks list. Or, as premium subscriber, you can use the filter option to create more individualized lists excluding tasks with certain labels or dates.
The only real downside of Todoist compared to Homeschoolplanet is that tasks cannot be organized in blocks like lesson plans. Lesson plans can be rescheduled and shifted forward as a whole group. Tasks on Todoist will need to be individually adjusted. If you prefer to have your lessons pre-planned for a particular day and you mostly have a certain sequence for your lessons, you’re better off using Homeschoolplanet as we all know that things don’t always go to plan and rescheduling lessons is inevitable. You don’t want that to be complicated or taking up too much of your time.
In the future I intend to go back to Homeschoolplanet but will include Todoist as a weblink in my lesson plans for subjects that don’t need to be taught in a particular sequence. A task on Homeschoolplanet may then say’ “complete a lesson of your choice in this Todoist list.” That way I can add a bit of flexibility to Homeschoolplanet but still benefit from all the perks that Homeschoolplanet offers specifically to home schoolers.
