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. Last week I reviewed the One Stop Teacher Planner, today I am following with my second rated pick, The Well Planned Gal Homeschool Planner. This was our school planner for the school year we have just completed. In fact I love this planner option so well, I have requested a coupon code for my readers, so if this planner looks like the option for you, go ahead and purchase it with code DANIELLE15 for 15% off.
The Well Planned Gal Homeschool Planner is a probably the leading homeschool planner in use today (from my very non-scientific analysis of the market). It is a planner that includes both everything a mom might need daily both to run her home and to homeschool her children. Made to simplify planning and take much of the questioning out of the process, you have a single design option with cover that runs July through June. Though there is a second version for homeschool families who school more than 4 children. However, for the first time this year, they have a customizable option than will arrive three to four weeks after ordering. It has several choices that I'll discuss at the end of this post.
The greatest success of the Well Planned Gal Homeschool Planner is the goal setting and planning walk through system. Using the A.C.H.I.E.V.E. and the A.S.P.I.R.E. systems Rebecca teaches you how to set realistic and achievable goals, and then how to break down your planning in order to work out those goals over your school year by creating what she terms benchmarks throughout your year. She even address the practical day to day tools such as scheduling, routines, planning, organizing, and then implementing action steps. As you go through the various steps she gives you excellent examples, as well as blank pages to work out your own benchmarks, weekly schedules, etc. Finally she gives you a number of evaluation sheets with clear examples and explanations for their use.
Despite being a planner pro, I found parts of her system to be immensely helpful. She just has a great way of making the whole process feel doable by breaking it down in small and simple steps. I would recommend the resource to both planning newbies and life long planners. However, with that said, I didn't find a use for all of the documents provided. I break our year down into quarters, so I used the benchmarks but modified them for four quarters rather than six, six-week periods. Then rather than using the benchmark evaluation pages, I just checked off as we completed each area in the initial page. I could have used more space for the class plan for each student, or at least a page that I could have labeled for the resources all the kids use rather than re-writing those subject areas and books over four times. At the same time I found that it left off some of the memory keeping type things I do like to record at the beginning of each year, about what the kids like or are looking forward to. These items required minor modifications, unfortunately, the remaining pages just weren't a fit for our homeschool style.
I didn't find most of the evaluation pages to be structured in a way that worked for our homeschool, but that doesn't mean they won't work for you. I'll share what didn't work for us, so that you can decide for yourself. The only subject that I grade at a younger level is math, and we have more than one math assignment per week, then for the older kids I don't grade on a 100point scale but using a variable point scale making some assignments worth 25 total points or 15 total points, and adding up over the course of the year. There isn't really room to grade in that fashion so the grade logs weren't really useful for me. I think the Review pages at the end of the planner are great, but in reality I'm probably not going to fill them out, because I'd rather use a print out where I sum up the year and what all we completed as a whole on a single page. I also ended up printing my own daily schedule up from Excel because I didn't find her schedule to provide enough space for different kids to be doing different things at the same time. So, if you have multiple kids that might be a concern. Again, all these pages can be great, but most are structured to only be used in one way, and just didn't really work for my style of planning and evaluating.
Next of course is the meat of the planner, with the lesson planning pages. First I want to tell you that they are dispersed throughout the planner with the monthly calendars before each month's lesson plans. Not enough teacher planners do this in my opinion, and it makes referencing things each month so much easier than when all the months are back at the beginning of the planner separate from the lesson plans. Each week is dated and runs Monday through Sunday, which is great. It allows you to record any homework that might need to be done on the weekends, or note any specially plans or field trips that might be available on the weekends. The main subjects are labeled and run down the side, with two additional blank subject boxes for extracurriculars or other subjects of your choosing. Most families like this, but if you are taking a year off of history or need more space for other subjects you may need to relabel some of the boxes. Additionally for the mom who wants everything at her fingertips, there is a section labeled for weekly to dos, dinner menu, and to organize. Again, because my planner doubles as part of our portfolio for our yearly evaluations I don't want this information in my planner, so I don't use these areas, but it is a great option for keeping everything in one place.
Lastly, there are a number of pages that occur before the lesson planning pages each month. They include a daily cleaning schedule for four weeks, space for 3 projects a month, a section for home and family, half a page of notes, some suggested resources, books read and field trips. Again, since I'm using this as part of my portfolio, I didn't use the pages for home other than the first month to just try out. However, field trip list and books read are a big part of our monthly schooling, so those were used every month.
The interior layout is almost exactly the same this year as last year, so there isn't a great deal of difference in the new planner. However, one thing is a major change, this year for the first time ever, you can customize your planner. I tried it out online to see how much a planner for our family would run us, and if I could get all the options I wanted. You remember all those things above that I said I needed to tweak or just didn't work for us? With the customizable planner those are no longer an issue, because not only can you opt to include or not include pages, you can also chose different layouts of some of the existing pages that might work better for you.
First you chose how many students you are looking to educate, and chose a theme, there are eight design families with different interior schemes. All are in the muted colors typical of the Well Planned Gal, but all are lovely complimentary designs with different patterns, two are floral options, two are more geometric layouts, and the finally four have differing themes. Each design family has 7 lesson planning layouts: including the original, a traditional layout with 7 classes, one that is more minimalistic with 8 classes, one that is an unlined block format, one with schedule times, one that is a horizontal planner, and another that is a daily lesson plan spread. You can also chose whether to retain the typical colored backgrounds under the lesson plan blocks or for them to be white at this time.
At this point, a create your own planner designer opens. You chose a cover out of 9 possibilities based on the layout that you chose as well as your binding option. Binding options include spiral, softcover, unbound, or 3 hole punched. All of the subjects and block titles are customizable now, so if you aren't doing science this year, you can relabel all the science blocks with ag class for example. However, it is worth noting that the times cannot be altered on the scheduled layout. Then you are able to chose your start and end date for your planner. The best part of the new customization options however, just might be the pages that you can add or remove from the planner. Now, you can take out all of the pages that don't work for you, and add in more of what does. In addition, there are several versions of some of the usual pages, to give you different options that work better. For one example, you can now plan by semesters, by 6 weeks, by months, or by quarters. For another example, you can chose which types of evaluation pages you need including three different types of grading pages. Additionally, you can chose exactly as many pages as you have students, so no need to have extra or not enough pages in your completed planner. These changes make this the perfect homeschool planner for someone who wants to customize their planner but not be in charge of printing and binding it all.
Priced at $39.95 for the standard homeschool planner, or starting at $49.95 for the customized options, it is still one of the most cost-effective options on the market today. Running a few different options, I came out with between $59.01 and $77.25 before shipping for a customized planner for four students, depending on the add on pages chosen. With both an on the shelf version with all of the things Well Planned Gal is known for and a new customizable option there is something for everyone at a very reasonable price point, making this planner a win.
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