A few weeks ago, I posted about things to look for to find the right homeschool planner for your homeschool. Since then I've had a follow up message asking if I would review in depth the planners that I would recommend. Today, I'm beginning with the One Stop Teacher Planner, which is my personal pick for the 2023-2024 school year. Baring Erin Condren coming out with a homeschool specific planner, I cannot picture myself using any other planner in the future either. In fact, I love this planner option so well, I have become an affiliate with One Stop Planners so you can purchase through my link and while you aren't charged any more, I make a small commission for your sale. So if this planner looks like the option for you, go ahead and purchase it.
The One Stop Teacher Planner is a customizable, printable planner that you can edit through google docs or PowerPoint. I used PowerPoint. And then you can print it to use as a physical planner or use it online as a digital planner. I am a pen and paper kind of gal, so I obviously went with the print option. Also there are three stylistic designs for interior pages: modern, whimsical, and mixed. There is something for everyone with these designs. They have custom fonts, and unique color schemes. All of which is fully customizable. I went with the mixed interior design.
First thing to love, is the cover and divider designs. At current count Kristin has 75 unique designs, many of which come in multiple color schemes for a total of 100+. I chose the cactus in the green theme. And on the off chance you don't find something that fits what you are looking for, there is a create your own cover option with detailed instructions to walk you through designing your own cover. When you open the file for one of her covers, there are 23 slides already made up with your design of choice, with everything from common dividers such as lesson plans, subject titles, and more. I prefer to organize my plan with the monthly views spaced out between the lesson planning pages, so I easily hopped on and changed the subject titles to the months of the year. Super simple and quick.
Calendars are key to planning out a homeschool year and One Stop Teacher Planner has all the options. Whether you want monthly calendars that take one page or two, Kristin has that. Whether you need your school year starting in January, July, or August there is a year at a glance spread for you. Additionally for curriculum mapping you can get planner spreads dated by week number rather than date. Just to try it out, I discovered it is possible to copy the August start calendar in order to then edit it and make a September start calendar instead, it just takes a little time, if you like to start after Labor Day.
Next of course is the meat of the planner, with the lesson planning pages. Each week is dated according to the date on Monday, and runs Monday through Friday. There are several options both to place the subjects across the top as well as down the side, and you can also choose how many subjects your planner has from two to ten. Additionally, if the typical layout of subjects over 5 days with a notes bar doesn't work for you, there are alternate lay outs with or without the notes, giving you more writing space instead of quotes on the pages, and even a one day per page lesson plan layout. The only layout option I didn't see would be having a seven day week as opposed to a five day week. In the past that would have been difficult for us as it hasn't been unusual for us to school six days in a week; however, next year we are going to school four days and adventure on our fifth day, so it shouldn't be an issue.
As I've mentioned one of the greatest benefits of of these planners are just how customizable they are. All the subjects can be replaced with the replace all feature in PowerPoint. You just select replace under editing, type in subject 1 for it to find, and then to replace with math and click replace all. Just like that, you have changed your subjects on all 52 lesson planning weeks. Furthermore, say that you want to change the font for "lesson plans" or the color of the box around the notes section you can. I even changed some of the arrow colors, to better go with the color coordinating that the kids do. You click on view and then slide master, and you can see all the master slides for each of your layouts, just scroll to the one that you want to change, make your change and it will automatically update all the slides with that layout when you exit. These simple things make it quick and easy to truly make your planner your own.
Finally, One Stop Planners make it easy to add any forms that you need to complete your planner. My biggest complaint in the last few years has been either having dozens of pages that I don't need or having to repurpose pages in order to get what I do need. That is no longer a problem with this planner. Under Classroom forms you can find all the typical forms for a classroom teacher such as attendance logs, seating charts, grade trackers, etc. But there is also a file of homeschool forms which includes weekly and monthly planning and recap pages, goal setting pages, and curriculum budgeting pages. The couple of pages I needed that weren't included were again simple to make using the master slides and part of other pages that she did have - such as my reading log and field trip information page that I include at the beginning of each month.
With the ability to change the fonts and colors on everything, add or delete images, and chose all the pages that fit your homeschool, this planner is a no brainer. Priced at $30 for a single year, or $60 for lifetime access, this planner is also a steal. Most of the high quality teacher planners on the market, especially the customizable ones run $60+ per year. I opted to get the lifetime membership and access to everything, including fun extras that she adds from time to time. What about the cost to print it out you ask. You can have Staples or Office Max print it out and bind it reasonably, or if you want to do it yourself all you need is the paper of your choice and a printer. I opted to do it myself and spent approximately $30 total in ink and paper, but I have an ink guzzling Canon printer, and I also printed up a ton of pages to piddle with before I settled on some of my layouts. When I was ready to print, I used less than one package of 65 lb paper from Staples and around 1/3 of a ink cartridge. If you have a laser printer, you are looking at even better pricing.
With so many options and such a great price point, the One Stop Teacher Planner is a win in my book. The only person it might not be a good fit for is someone that just can't find the time to download the files organize their planner. But then again, I have 6 kids, and it only took me 3 or 4 days to completely set up mine. I really can't recommend them enough.
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