Homeschool Tools That Do Real Work

Check the rules, find your child's starting point, build the week, and keep the records. Each resource leads to a concrete output and clearly states whether an account is required.

By Andrew Garber, founder of TheHomeschoolingCompany. Reviewed August 12, 2026.

Start Here

1. Check your state requirements for notification, subjects, testing, and records.
2. Take the free internal placement diagnostic to identify readiness and gaps before choosing a level.
3. Find a curriculum direction, then build a weekly schedule your family can run.
4. Explore the full grades K-12 platform when you need curriculum, mentoring, progress, attendance, and connected records.

You do not need every tool at once. Begin with the first question you cannot answer confidently, keep the output, and move forward only when the next decision becomes useful.

Free Planning Tools

• State Requirements Checker: choose a state and review the main notification, curriculum, testing, and record-keeping categories.
• Curriculum Fit Quiz: combine grade band, parent time, learning style, current curriculum, and pain points into a practical recommendation.
• Weekly Schedule Generator: create a printable three-to-five-day rhythm around parent availability, academic focus, and outside commitments.
• Project Generator: create an interest-led educational project for a teen instead of beginning with a generic worksheet.
• Cost Calculator: compare curriculum, activities, supplies, testing, tutoring, and public-school extras in one annual estimate.
• Transcript Draft Builder: add courses, credits, and grades, calculate a draft GPA, and print a simple parent-reviewed record.

These public planning tools do not require an account. Their output may not be stored automatically, so print, download, or copy anything you want to preserve.

Tools That Connect to an Account

The free placement diagnostic begins with an email and produces a report-only internal readiness signal. It can help a family notice strengths, gaps, or different starting levels by subject before choosing curriculum. It is not an official MAP Growth, state, AP, SAT, or other third-party test administration.

The compliance document generator requires sign-in and can create state-aware drafts such as letters of intent, IHIPs, attendance logs, progress reports, evaluations, course descriptions, and high-school records. Linked parent records can bring placement, mastery, attendance, completed work, generated documents, exports, and document links into a parent-facing proof packet.

What the Full Platform Adds

Planning tools answer one question at a time. The school platform connects the work across the year. Every curriculum plan starts with a 14-day free trial. $0 is due today, and normal billing begins after 14 days.

School in a Box provides all standard subjects for grades K-12, electives, promotion exams, attendance, weekly grids, state-aware document drafts, and data portability, plus custom elective paths with readings, projects, rubrics, and mentor context built around serious interests. Institution access is available for libraries, co-ops, and programs that manage family seats.

Important Boundaries

• State guidance is a plain-English starting point, not legal advice. Verify current official state and district sources before filing or relying on a deadline.
• Placement results are internal readiness signals, not official third-party scores.
• Transcript and compliance outputs are parent-reviewed homeschool records. Receiving schools, colleges, athletic bodies, scholarship programs, and other organizations make their own acceptance decisions.
• The full standard-subject curriculum covers grades K-12. Kindergarten through Grade 2 runs on a spoken path for children who cannot read the screen yet; world languages open at Grade 3.

Use the Smallest Tool That Solves the Problem

If the question is legal setup, begin with the state checker. If the question is academic starting level, use placement. If the week feels impossible to run, build the schedule before buying more curriculum. If high-school records are thin, draft the transcript and identify the missing course evidence. Move into the full platform when the family needs the curriculum, mentoring, progress, attendance, and records to stay connected instead of living in separate tabs.

Public Guides and Tools

Browse retained planning guides, comparisons, and tools by title.