If you have not done the first 15 minutes yet
Start with the first-time setup walkthrough. That piece covers signing up, adding your first child and logging your very first activity. It takes about 15 minutes and everything below assumes you have finished it.
If you have already done that, you are in the right place. This article is about the rest of your first home education week, and is part of the Using Willowfolio guide collection.
What does a good first week of home education actually look like?
There is no daily checklist here. A daily "log X by Day Y" plan is exactly the school-shaped pressure you came here to get away from. Instead, think of Week 1 as a soft shape with three loose zones.
Some days you will open the app. Some days you will not. Both are fine.
The idea is not to master the app in seven days. It is to build one small habit: noticing what your child is doing, and occasionally writing it down. That is observation (watching your child's interests and choices without directing them), and it is the quiet practice that makes home education work over time.
Days 1 and 2: settle in and log one thing
You have already done the first-time setup. Your child is added. You have logged one activity. That is enough for Day 1.
On Day 2, try to log one more activity. It does not need to be formal. If your child spent forty minutes building a marble run, that counts. If they helped you cook dinner and you talked about measuring, that counts.
Open the activity log, tap "Log Activity", write a sentence and save it.
If you are a single parent, or working shifts, or managing a toddler alongside the child you are home educating, one log across two days is plenty. You are building a habit, not filling a quota.
Days 3 and 4: one observation and a first look at coverage
By Day 3, you have probably logged one or two activities. This is the point where most new home educators start wondering "is that enough?" It is.
On one of these days, try adding a short observation note to your next logged activity. An observation does not need to be long. "She chose to go back to the puzzle three times without being asked" is a complete observation. "He got frustrated with the scissors and switched to tearing the paper instead" is another.
You are noticing, not grading.
When you feel ready, open the coverage map (a colour-coded display showing how your logged activities spread across Montessori areas and National Curriculum subjects). Do not open it to fix anything. Open it to see what colour it is. At this stage it will be mostly empty, and that is completely normal.
You are looking at a map that is meant to fill in over months, not days.
If the empty squares make you anxious rather than curious, close the map and come back in a fortnight. There is no rush.
Day 5: add a book, if reading happens
If your child is reading something, or you are reading aloud together, you can add it to the reading log. Search by title and the app fills in the author and cover image for you.
If your child is not reading independently yet, or if reading is a sore point right now, skip this step entirely. The reading log is there when you need it. It is not a deadline.
Days 6 and 7: rest
No logging required. Close the app. Go for a walk, watch something together, or do nothing at all. Home education is not school, and weekends do not need to be "productive".
If you feel the itch to log something on a Saturday because your child did something brilliant, go ahead. But do not feel you have to.
A real first week: Priya in Sheffield
Priya deregistered her six-year-old, Zain, from a Sheffield primary in January. She works three days a week as a pharmacy assistant, and her mum helps with childcare on those days.
Day 1 (Monday): Priya did the 15-minute setup on her phone after Zain went to bed. She added him, set his Montessori plane (the developmental stage the app uses to suggest age-appropriate activities, auto-detected from his date of birth), and logged "playing with Lego for 45 minutes after school run" as her first activity.
Day 2: Nothing logged. She was at work. That was fine.
Day 3: Zain spent the morning at her mum's house, drawing maps of imaginary islands. Priya logged it that evening with a short note: "He drew three maps and named every country. Very absorbed." She added an observation tag.
Day 4: She opened the coverage map for the first time. Two squares had colour. She closed it and made a cup of tea.
Day 5: Zain had been reading a Horrible Histories book all week. Priya added it to the reading log.
Days 6-7: No logging. They went to the park. Zain built a den. None of it was recorded, and none of it needed to be.
Priya's Week 1 total: three logged activities, one book, one glance at the coverage map. That is a successful first week.
If your week looks thinner than Priya's, perhaps because you are working full-time, solo parenting, new to homeschooling and still finding your feet, or your child is still adjusting, that is still a successful first week. One log is enough. Even zero logs with the app installed and a child added is a start.
If anything in Willowfolio is not doing what you expect this week, write to us at [email protected] and a real person will sort it out.
Frequently asked.
- I only logged one activity all week. Is that enough?
- Yes. One logged activity is more than zero, and zero was where you started. The app does not judge frequency. You can build from here at whatever pace suits your family.
- The coverage map looks mostly empty. Should I be worried?
- Not at all. The coverage map is a long-term picture, not a weekly report card. After one week it is supposed to look sparse. Give it a term and it will start to fill in without you chasing it.
- Do I need to log every single thing we do?
- No. Log the things you want to remember or might want to show your Local Authority later. Plenty of real learning happens off-screen and off-record, and that is fine.
- My child is still deschooling (decompressing from school). Should I even be logging yet?
- You can. Deschooling activities (walks, baking, free play, conversations) are real learning and worth recording if you want to. But if logging feels like pressure right now, leave it for a few weeks. The app will still be here. (Deschooling means the settling-in period after leaving school, not the act of leaving, neither a refusal to educate. Deregistration is the legal step; deschooling is what the child does next. Education continues throughout deschooling.)
- Can I restart the getting-started checklist if I skipped steps?
- Yes. The checklist stays on the Your week page until you have completed or dismissed each step. You can come back to any step whenever you are ready.