Quite Possibly the Only Homeschool Planner You’ll Ever Need

Just in time for back to school preparations we’ve been testing and reviewing Homeschool Planet by The Homeschool Buyers Co-op

About Homeschool Planet

I’ve been a member of the Homeschool Buyers Co-op for a few years but I’ve never had the chance to check out Homeschool Planet.

Homeschool Planet claims to the be the best Homeschool Planner on the market. It says it’s easier to manage than other online Homeschool Planners and that it’s got everything you need to organize your homeschool and your life.

So let’s check that out….

Homeschool Planet is an online Homeschool Planner.  It’s features include…

• A Calendar view to see your month at a glance.
• A Planner view so you can see your schedule like you would in a desk planner.
• A desktop view so you can see your full day on one page. Includes the widgets you have set up such as quotes, Bible verses, to-do list, news from Homeschool Co-Op, the weather and more.
• Set up your lesson plans with resources, class length and days, attendance and grading
• Send daily digests to all your members (automatically) so they can know what their days look like
• add in appointments, meetings, and anything else you want to schedule
• Birthday reminders
• Create transcripts
• Logins for family members
• you can also view a limited version of Homeschool Planet on your smart phone or tablet
• and a bit more

As a member of the Homeschool Buyers Co-Op you can subscribe to Homeschool Planet for $6.95 a month or $65 a year. The Homeschool Buyers Co-Op membership is free and offers a ton of benefits.

Getting Started on Homeschool Planet

To get started organizing you can set up profiles for all the members of your family and even log ins so they can see their schedules.

If you’re setting up a profile for a homeschooled child you can enter in their subjects, how often the lessons are, grading using percentages of tests and homework, track the school hours, and resources or tools being used.

This is normally where I found other homeschool online planners weighed me down. The time to enter this information usually took so long and was so cumbersome I gave up. And it usually wasn’t intuitive meaning I HAD to refer to the help or manual to figure out how to get it right. In the attempt to give us every bell and whistle they become more problematic than they’re worth and the time it takes to learn the interface could be better spent getting your child’s curriculum in order.

But this time I found entering all this homeschool information pretty painless.

Even though we’re on summer break now I’ve already started getting our course information in for the 2015-2016 year.

You can also enter daily chores, appointments and basically anything your family member has coming up. I also added my mother since I’m helping her with her medical needs. I guess it might be a good idea for me to tell her I’m logging her doctor visits eh?

When you log into Homeschool Planet you have a dash board where you can add various widgets and customize the look. This is what makes Homeschool Planet a good browser home page. It took me a while to realize that this should probably be my home page when I log on to the internet. On this page you can also see your calendar and you schedule in a planner like format.

One one page I can enter her class subject, what day of the week it takes place and at what time and for how long. If I want to add details to future course dates I can type them right on this page and there’s a drop down list so I can include web links, pdfs, reminders, or what book we will be using.

Within Homeschool Planet you can also send messages to your member phones or emails. I text my weekly grocery list to my phone.

How I Am Using Homeschool Planet

Since we’re in the middle of our summer break right now I’ve been mostly using Homeschool Planet for blogging, appointments, field trips (we catch up on them all summer), and my shopping lists. I’m also using the down time to get set up for our 2015-2016 Homeschool year which will be here before we know it.

I keep the Weather, My To-Do List, Shopping List, Daily Bible Verse,  A Search widget (search all across the internet here), and a message widget (so I can send quick messages) on my front page.

I initially set up 4 profiles. Myself, my husband, my daughter, and my mother.  For my mother I keep track of her doctor’s appointments and for my daughter I’ve been putting in her upcoming homeschool schedule, doctor and dentist appointments, piano lessons, outtings, and church activities. You can also combine activities when more than one family member will be attending.

By the way you can also choose different themes. That was just the one that was ringing my chime at the moment.

It seems every day I’m finding some new nugget in Homeschool Planet that can help me keep track of several areas. And I’m not the only one. Many of the Schoolhouse Review Crew members report on a daily basis some new way they’ve discovered for Homeschool Planet to help them get organized.

As a rule I don’t usually take to an online planner. I’ve kind of always known I’m a paper person but the more online gadgets I test out I realize this is very true. So I didn’t hold out my hopes for  Homeschool Planet. But I’m finding that Homeschool Planet makes it so easy to organize so much.

What I Like. What I Would Like to Change About Homeschool Planet

I like that the interface is super user friendly and I don’t get lost in a maze of entry screens.

I like all the ways that I can keep track of homeschool details.

I love seeing everything in my day at a glance. Homeschool, Home, Church, Family.

What would I like to change? Seriously right now I can’t imagine. Some days I agonize over the price but then remember that I’ve paid more for less. The combination of managing so many intricate details of homeschooling AND so many family and personal life details make this Homeschool Planner a good bargain. And broken down into monthly payments it’s not so painful.

So now I’m really looking forward, finally, to keeping track of a homeschool year.

*some of these images are samples of the product and some are my own screen shots

** This post does contain affiliate links.

Right now YOU can try out Homeschool Planet FREE for 30 Days.

You can read more reviews on Homeschool Planet if you click the big green banner below.

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