Hands down, I would say that the hardest part of homeschooling is setting up a plan and staying organized. For me at least, I am not just homeschooling. I am running an essential oil business, tutoring other people’s kids, managing the family budget, adding field trips, shuttling kids to scouts and church activities, running to the grocery store, attempting to keep the house clean and a whole lot more.
My schedule is all over the place despite all the various planning systems I’ve tried. Trying to keep my family informed about what the schedule is, keeping one of my teenagers accountable and working toward his goal to graduate next year, etc isn’t going as smoothly as I’d like. That’s why I am reviewing a homeschool online planner called Homeschool Planet.
The Benefits
A lot of reviews start off with the features. I’d rather get right to the benefits that piqued my interest from the beginning.
It’s online- Family members can access it anywhere they can connect to the internet with their own logins
Easily printable- Great for times when the internet isn’t available or I’m setting up appointments with clients
Saves time- kids can login to view and check off assignments
Record keeping is easy- integrated grading, attendance and transcripts
I’m always ready- all the supplies I need for my lessons are listed in the resource view
Plays well with other calendars: Apple Ical, Google Calendar, etc.
Free Texting: Allows me to text myself or someone else separate grocery lists for each store
Everything in one place: meal planning, research widgets, appointments, daily digest (in case I forgot what I did or what my family did)
Rescheduling lessons is easy- With a couple clicks, you can push back all the lessons by one day so you can enjoy unexpected opportunities.
Plays well with all devices: Family members can access Homeschool Planet from any of the Android and iOS devices we own: computer, tablet and phone.
Easy to use: Many people find that they have only a few questions. Homeschool Planet also has tutorials showing you step by step instructions.
I have to throw this feature in before I continue: If you don’t like pink, there are other colors available! YEA!
Adding Lessons
Homeschool Planet has a lot of options to make it easy to add lessons and assign them to your kids. You can add links to websites that will be helpful or necessary for the lesson to be completed.
There are also several professionally created lesson plans that can be purchased separately that make planning even easier. With a couple of clicks, you can assign lessons from your favorite curriculum to one, multiple, or all your kids. Viola! You’ve got an entire school year planned in that subject. The list is actually pretty long and you can suggest even more curriculum additions if your favorite isn’t listed. Here are a few:
Grading and Transcripts
One area I really needed to work on for the last few years is grading. My kids worked in their education Thomas Jefferson Education (TJED) style, but aren’t planning to go to a TJED-type college. So they need grades.
What I’ve learned is that it will be very helpful to have a transcript with letter grades and a GPA. I already started one on my spreadsheet program (the awesome free OpenOffice.org- LibreOffice.org is great and free, too). It is a lot more tedious and requires a lot more of my time than the built in system that Homeschool Planet Offers.
Each time my kids or I mark off a lesson, I can assign it a grade easily as shown in the video on the right. It takes seconds and requires very little effort on my part compared with my old spreadsheet method. See the example of a an official transcript generated by Homeschool Planet below:
That’s not all. I can grade each assignment or quiz by adding either a letter grade or entering how many questions they got right out of how many questions are possible as shown in the image below.
Each assignment type can be weighted, too, as shown below.
You can create a calendar based on holidays, birthdays, vacations, etc.
Do I recommend Homeschool Planet?
I have barely scratched the surface of Homeschool Planet’s capabilities. Most of the focus was on the features that would assist you in keeping your homeschool organized and save time.
Based on my research, this is the most comprehensive calendar system that allows me to manage business schedules, everything homeschool, menu, shopping list and integrates external calendars such as iCal and Google Calendar. Homeschool Planet’s system has the potential to teach children time management and places more of the accountability on them, when they are ready to accept that responsibility.
Don’t take my word for it. Try it now for free.
Homeschool Planet doesn’t automatically turn your free trial into a paid subscription. You have 2 subscription options:
- Annual: $65 per year. It doesn’t automatically renew and you’ll get an email notifying you about a month before your subscription ends so you can CHOOSE to continue your subscription.
- Monthly: $6.95 per month. You can cancel at any time and your subscription will end on your monthly anniversary date. Must cancel 5 days before anniversary date.
The price is so low because you get it through your FREE membership at the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op, where you’ll get the best prices on curriculum and tools for your homeschool. Your free Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op membership also comes with support from other moms plus tons of free resources and services. The more members in the c0-op, the better the savings they can extend to us all. Join today and start saving on all your homeschool needs.
Let me show you how EASY it is to add a professionally created lesson plan to your schedule.
Watch to discover how professionally developed Life of Fred lesson plans save you time and make lessons more fun.
Mark Kistler’s Pencil Power Portfolio lesson plans were created EXCLUSIVELY for Homeschool Planet.
Dynamic Literacy created Words that Matter complete vocabulary curriculum exclusively for Homeschool Planet. See what it can do for you in this short video.
One of the features I like is that I can add grades to my planner for each subject very easily. I can also weight the grades within each class by category: projects, quizzes, tests, etc.
