Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Homeschool Planet {Schoolhouse Crew Review}

I've admitted before that I am not very organized when it comes to homeschooling (or pretty much anything else). Earlier this year I set up a fabulous system to keep a bullet journal with all my appointments, deadlines, and notes. It worked for a few months, but then I set it aside one day when I was crazy busy and didn't ever pick it back up.

The one thing that I've been able to keep track of consistently is all of our medical appointments. I enter them on my google calendar so that I can access them either from home or when I'm out. I know that I'm prone to forgetting things so I make sure everything important gets entered.

Since keeping track of commitments on an online calendar works so well for me, I wondered if I could ever get an online planner to work for organizing our homeschool days and making sure we get everything done. So far it seems like Homeschool Planet from Homeschool Buyers Co-Op is just what I need.


The first thing I set up on Homeschool Planet was our next school year. It's actually a bit unusual for me to set up a school year calendar in advance. In past years, we would start back to school at approximately the same time the public schools in our area started, take breaks when we needed them, and finish roughly the same time the public schools did. I never actually counted the number of days of school; I just made sure we covered a years' worth of materials. With Homeschool Planet, I now have a plan for finishing all of the 172 days of school that Colorado requires.


As I was working on our school year calendar, I figured out how to import my google calendars into Homeschool Planet. At this point I don't have any appointments or commitments scheduled past this week, but I know they'll start filling up my days. By importing the google calendar that I already use, I can see all of my obligations at one time.


I settled on a system for keeping track of my appointments outside the home on my google calendar and keeping track of commitments at home on Homeschool Planet. In the calendar above, you can see the gray/white shaded boxes which were imported from that. I now keep track of my blogging commitments and review due dates on Homeschool Planet. When school starts, our daily tasks and assignments will also be on Homeschool Planet.

Homeschool Planet makes it easy to enter new assignments. For instance, I was able to set up a schedule for the Homeschooling High School blog series that I'm taking part in. I can see both the due dates and the specific topics for each month. Hopefully I won't forget about writing them and then be scrambling to write posts at the last minute.


I had so much fun trying out the scheduling option that I set up a running schedule so that I can start another run streak. I fiddled with dates until I figured out the latest date that I can start running daily if I wanted to get a 100 day streak in this year.

It was equally easy to start inputting Lauren's classes for the fall. I can have assignments repeat every day or in different patterns. I set up her History class so that I could easily see which days will have a test, and I set up her Math U See class according to which of the workbook pages she normally does.



After setting up the assignments for each class, they show up on the calendar with a box to check when completed. I love finishing things and checking off boxes.

The same list and check boxes can be seen on the mobile version, giving me the flexibility to keep up with record keeping when I'm not at home (or when I am at home but somebody else is using the computer).



Homeschool Planet gives me a place to see all our school assignments and a place to keep up with all the rest of our commitments. I am confident that this year will finally be the year I keep accurate and useful records of our homeschooling days.


A one year subscription to Homeschool Planet costs $65 per year or $6.95 per month. Homeschool Buyers Co-Op offers a free thirty day subscription so that you can find out for yourself how much you need it.

Homeschool Planet Review

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1 comment:

  1. That looks pretty cool! I guess I'm old (home)school-- the online format just doesn't satisfy my need for control/ownership like the old Homeschool Tracker cd did over a decade ago... though if I were starting over now, the ability to merge in the family Google calendar just might convince me to use this program.

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