Turn Any Curriculum Into a Year Plan

A lesson count, a table of contents, or a spreadsheet — any of them becomes a full year of work.

Open Plan › Import Curriculum and answer one question: what do you have? There are three tools, and all of them end at the same review screen, where nothing is created until you say so.

Which tool do I want?

Picking the wrong one is the first place imports go sideways, so start here. All three are on the import page under Import Method. Click one and its form opens below.

• 1: A lesson count or table of contents. One book with numbered lessons. "Saxon Math has 120 lessons" is genuinely enough, and if you have the table of contents you can paste it in for real titles.
• 2: Chapters or units to plan. A book organised in chapters or units that you'll break into weeks yourself. You use the same handful of tasks each time: read, notebook page, and quiz.
• 3: A spreadsheet of assignments. You already planned the year in Excel or Google Sheets and want those exact rows, dates and all. Fair warning before you start: the header row has to use the column names Trellis knows, so your existing sheet will probably need renaming first. The list is here.

Tool 1: a lesson count or table of contents

This is the shortest path, and it works with almost nothing. Choose A lesson count or table of contents and fill in Build a curriculum plan.

1. Tick the child or children. Each gets their own copy, so they check off their own work.
2. Type the Subject. Leave it blank only if the plan really covers several subjects at once; see Counts toward multiple subjects below.
3. Lessons is how many to create, not how many the book has. The line under Lessons and Starting at # shows the exact numbering as you type. Resuming at lesson 90 of a 120-lesson book, enter 31 lessons and start at 90 to make lessons 90 through 120. Entering 120 alongside a start of 90 makes 120 lessons numbered 90 to 209.
4. Choose how many Months to spread them over.
5. Set the Start Month. This decides where the whole year lands, so it's worth a look every time.
6. Optional but worth it: paste your table of contents or scope & sequence into the big box. Trellis then uses the real lesson titles instead of "Lesson 1, Lesson 2…", and strips page numbers and dot leaders like "Chapter 3 ........ 47". Paste fewer titles than lessons and the rest are numbered for you.

Then click Preview Suggested Lessons.

Not sure how to lay the list out? The box has a See example formats line under it with these five shapes. Pick the one closest to yours and it fills the box, ready to edit.

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3

Book title
    Ch 1, pp. 1-12
    Ch 2, pp. 13-24

Week 1
    Read: chapter book, pp. 1-12
    Language arts

Unit 1: Ancient Egypt
    The Nile
    Pharaohs

1A
1B
1C

What the preview shows

Nothing has been created yet. The Review Before Importing screen is where you check the plan while changes are still free.

1. The summary sentence: how many lessons, for which subject, and the months they'll spread across. Underneath it explains the pacing. Each month gets lessons in proportion to its real school days, so a month with a break scheduled gets fewer on purpose.
2. The Pacing strip. Wrong span? Change Start month, Months to spread across, or how many lessons to use, then Update Preview to re-deal them. Lessons past your limit stay in the list, just unticked.
3. Create These Items when it looks right.

Where the lessons land

Imported lessons arrive unscheduled. Open the calendar's Month view. They're waiting in the Curriculum To Schedule panel on the right, already grouped into the month they were paced into. Drag one onto a day, or click it and pick a day; no dragging is needed.

Tool 2: chapters or units to plan

Choose Chapters or units to plan for the Lesson Planning Assistant. This is the one for a book that isn't already cut into daily lessons.

1. Paste your chapter or unit list into Chapters or units, one per line. Indent (or press Tab on) the chapter or week lines under a header and each becomes its own lesson. The header itself is not a lesson. For a reading plan, type the book title as the header, then write the pages on each indented line. "Book title" with "Ch 1, pp. 1-12" beneath it becomes a lesson called "Book title - Ch 1". The 1-12 is already filled in under Pages to read on the preview. Start a line with a dash (-) instead and it becomes a task inside the lesson above it.
2. Add your Default tasks, the handful of things you do for every chapter. They become the notes on each lesson. Leave it blank and lessons import as just their titles; the examples on screen are suggestions, not defaults. See example task lists under the box offers the usual rounds, and picking one fills the box.
3. Set Start and Months, and the lessons are paced across them by week.

Then click Preview Plan.

The preview is the same review screen as before. Each indented chapter or week has become its own lesson with its book or unit name carried into the title. Pages you wrote on the line are already filled in under Pages to read, and you can change or clear any of them here. A range such as 12–27 becomes Read pages 12–27 in Notes, and replaces a plain Read chapter or Read the chapter default. It keeps your other default tasks. Notes are details the child opens to read; they do not appear in the calendar title.

The same five layouts from Tool 1 work here, and the box offers them under See example formats.

They land in the same place as any other plan: the Curriculum To Schedule panel in the calendar's month view, ready to drag onto days.

Tool 3: a spreadsheet you already have

Already planned the year in Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or Numbers? Choose A spreadsheet of assignments. Before you copy anything, though, one honest warning.

The header row has to match, and yours probably doesn't. Trellis reads a fixed set of column names. It does not guess: a column it doesn't recognise is dropped (the preview tells you which one). If child and task aren't both there, it refuses the whole paste. A sheet you already keep with headings like Student Name, What to do, and Date Due has not one name Trellis knows. It will be turned away. The fix is small and you only do it once: retype row 1 with the names in the list below. Nothing under row 1 has to change.

Step 1: the sheet, before you copy anything

This is a sheet Trellis reads cleanly. Nothing fancy: no colours, no merged cells, and no title row. Row 1 holds the column names. Every row under it is one assignment for one child.

Two of those five columns are compulsory: child and task. The rest are there because they save you work later. Names in the child column have to match a child's name or username in Trellis; Britta works, but Brit doesn't. If your sheet already carries dates, add start date or due date; either 9/7/2026 or 2026-09-07 works.

The column names Trellis reads

This is the whole list, and it's the same list the Accepted Columns card shows on the import page. Capitals, extra spaces, underscores and hyphens make no difference; Due Date, due date and due_date are the same column. Anything else in your header row is skipped, and named back to you as an ignored column.

A column your sheet has that isn't on this list, such as a teacher's name, page count, or curriculum column, isn't an error. It's simply left behind, and the import says so: "Ignored columns: teacher." If you want that information kept, rename the column to notes and it rides along on the assignment.

Step 2: select the rows and copy

Select the header row and everything under it, A1 through E6 in this sheet, and copy with Ctrl+C (⌘C on a Mac). Take row 1 with you: without the header row, Trellis has no way to tell a subject from a note, and the paste is refused.

Step 3: paste it into Trellis

1. Paste into Spreadsheet rows. It will look ragged in the box because the columns line up by tab characters, not by eye, and that's fine. (Typing straight in instead? Tab inserts a column separator; Shift+Tab still leaves the box.)
2. Or skip the pasting and upload the file instead. Excel workbooks (.xlsx) and CSVs both work, and blank rows above your header are fine. In Google Sheets: File › Download › Comma-separated values.

The paste box has a See example header rows line under it with three ready header rows, written in the exact names above. Picking one puts that row in the box, and your own rows go under it.

child	task	due date

child	task	subject	suggested month

child	task	subject	start date	due date
and 11 more

Then click Preview Import.

The Accepted Columns card sits beside the form with that same list, and an Example Sheet under the paste box shows the layout again.

The review screen looks a little different for a spreadsheet. Each row carries its own child, subject, minutes, notes, and optional dates instead of one setting for the whole plan.

1. Check the child and subject on every row. If a row has a date, its Year badge says which school year that date falls in. It also flags anything already in the past, which is handy if you're importing a plan you started before Trellis.

Because this example did not invent dates, its lessons stay in All Unscheduled until you place them. If a row in your own sheet carries a date, it goes straight onto that day.

Review before importing, whichever tool you used

Every path lands on Review Before Importing, and nothing exists yet. This is your cheap chance to fix things:

• Edit any title, or add a note that rides along on the assignment
• Untick the include box on rows you don't want; the header checkbox toggles them all
• Use Find lessons to narrow a long plan by title, subject, or child. Select all shown, Clear shown, and the grading tools affect only those matches; clearing the search keeps your edits.
• The Graded column starts ticked only on quizzes and tests; the header checkbox flips every row at once
• For participation-style work, tick Full points when completed and set Points possible. Full points starts off for every fresh import; the bulk controls can set every visible match at once. Unfinished work stays unscored, and a score you enter later wins.
• Switching curricula mid-year? Tick Already done on work your child has finished and it imports as complete, recorded in the right month rather than today
• Want to keep the plan? Choose Save for future reuse for a younger sibling later, or Also share it to the Curriculum Catalog

Then Create These Items.

Counts toward multiple subjects

Some plans aren't one subject. In a morning basket, unit study, or Ambleside year, the hour counts toward several subjects at once. This is where parents most often get stuck.

1. Leave Subject blank and tick Counts toward multiple subjects underneath it. The pop-out opens straight away.
2. Name the work, then give each subject its own minutes. Back on the form you'll see the split as chips, with Edit subject splits… to change it. Estimated minutes per assignment is added up for you from the subjects.

Each lesson then shows up on your child's day under the name you gave it. The hours land in every one of those subjects in your records, split between them and never counted twice.

Different situation: the plan is one subject, but some of its minutes belong somewhere else, such as a history course with writing in it. For that, keep the subject and use Also counts toward other subjects instead, which takes those minutes out of the main subject's share.

Imported the wrong thing?

The Recent Imports card on the import page lists every batch you've run.

1. The Undo button removes everything that import created, but only while the batch is still untouched. Moving lessons to different dates is okay. Once any lesson is checked off, graded, timed, used for a reading record, or edited, the batch is marked In use. Trellis then refuses the one-click Undo so it cannot erase established work. If checking work off is the only reason, uncheck that work and Undo returns.
2. Save to catalog keeps a curriculum or lesson-assistant plan you forgot to save on the review screen. Choose Private to reuse it for another child, or Shared to publish it. It is also how you repair a plan that came out wrong. Save it, follow the link to Full edit, change whatever needs changing, and import it again.

A spreadsheet import can't be saved as a plan, because one pasted sheet can carry several children and several subjects. Fix those rows where they live instead: open the Task Spreadsheet and edit them there. You can also select and delete them there, then paste a corrected sheet.

Old PDF imports that left behind junk like %PDF-1.7 have their own cleanup tool, linked from the bottom of the same card.

Scheduling what you imported

Suggested lessons sit in the calendar's month view under Curriculum To Schedule and All Unscheduled until you give them days. You don't have to schedule them all; plenty of families leave a subject as a monthly pile and work down it. The calendar guide picks up from there.

Changed your pace? Recalculate evens out what's left of an imported plan. It takes the lessons from that import you haven't dated yet and re-deals them across the same months the import was originally spread over. It won't reach past that span into later months. It only touches plans that came from the two curriculum tools, not rows you pasted in from a spreadsheet. To move work into months the import never covered, drag it, or re-import the part that's left with a new Start Month.

The Curriculum Catalog

Any plan you import can be saved to the Curriculum Catalog. Tick Also share it to the Trellis Curriculum Catalog on the review screen, or save a past batch from Recent Imports. Keep a plan Private to reuse it for a sibling. Share it instead and other families can copy a whole year of your work in one click. Sharing publishes the reusable lesson plan, including titles, subject setup, suggested months, minutes, the notes you wrote on each lesson, and grading setup. Grading setup means whether each lesson is graded and its points possible. Full points when completed starts unchecked on every new import. Your child's name, exact schedule dates, completions, and earned scores never do.

Your own plans can wear a book cover, so the catalog shelf looks like your real shelf. Use Book cover in the card's Edit panel to upload a PNG, JPG, WebP, or GIF (we'll shrink big photos automatically). Remove cover takes it off again.

Full edit: reshape a plan any time

Sharing isn't a commitment to your first draft. On your own catalog cards, the quick Edit handles the name, minutes, and subject split. Full edit opens the whole plan on a page that works like the import screen:

• The lesson list is a big text box, one lesson per line, in order. Rename, reorder, insert, or delete lines freely
• Lessons that keep their exact title keep their own minutes, graded flag, and subject split; renamed or brand-new lines start fresh
• Change Months to space the lessons evenly across the new span when you save

Still stuck? Send it to us

If you've tried these steps and your curriculum still won't cooperate, send it to us. That goes for a strange PDF, a photographed table of contents, or a spreadsheet that refuses to behave. Attach whatever you have and tell us what curriculum it is. We'll turn it into a ready-to-import plan in the Curriculum Catalog and post the link on your request when it's ready.