This is the 2nd part of my homeschool planning post. To see part one go here. Part two will talk about digital planners. There’s quite a few choices of digital planners.
If you have a little extra money, Homeschool Planet is a great online planner. It’s a little on the pricy side at $65/year, but they do offer a free 30 day trial to see if you like it and how it would work for you. The 30 day trial is awesome. It allows you to enter in each subject separately and plan out the entire year if you so wanted quickly by autofilling in lessons, e.g. Chapter 1 – 14 spread out over 14 days, 14 weeks, or however you want to break it down. If you miss a day, say for a fieldtrip or sick day, the planner can shift all your lessons down making it easy to stay on track without feeling far behind or having to reenter everything by hand. And if you need to miss only one subject, like if you needed extra time to review a concept in math before moving on, you can shift just that one subject.
There’s also an option to make to do lists, grocery lists, check lists, etc. You can have them emailed or text messaged to someone as well. Text message your grocery list to your husband, email check lists to your older children for independent learning. Kids can also have their own log in to check off the lists themselves without being able to edit the actual planner. During my trial period I also figured out how to create supply lists at the very beginning of each week that we would need for history and science activities and library lists at the end of each week for the books I would need the following week. Everything is also printable if you prefer to have hard copies instead of digital.
If your like a lot of homeschool families I know, $65 is a lot for a planner though, no matter how cool it is. There are free online planners as well. Besides just plugging everything yourself into google calendar you can try cozi. Cozi is a free app and website that allows you to schdule everything. From their website, “It helps you manage the chaos of family life with a shared calendar, shopping lists, to do lists and more. Cozi keeps track of everything from school schedules and sports activities to grocery lists, meals and chores — all in one place the whole family can access anytime, anywhere.”
Cozi, similar to Homeschool Planet, allows multiple log ins for the same calendar and also allows texting lists to family members. They email you a weekly summary of everything on your schedule as well. You can color coat things to different people for your family to quickly see at a glance who has a doctor’s appointment or who needs to go to that field trip.
What type of planners do you like to use? Online, paper, a mixture of both? Leave a comment and let me know what works for your family!
Galleons Lap 