Planning the Home School Year

Home School Planet

Planning.  It's where I fall short.  One of many areas I fall short, but probably the biggest area that I need to correct.  With as many schedules and grades as I currently have in my house, not to mention laundry, meals, barn chores, and 4-H, I finally had to come up with something that would work for the whole family.  We started with purchasing a 4 month whiteboard calendar.  Seeing 4 months at a time has helped us to know what is happening and when.  Next, I started using the whiteboard menu planner on the fridge and that helped with meal preparations.  That still left home school lesson plans.  I purchased the free trial of Home School Planet last spring and after having used it for several months, I can say it is well worth the subscription price.  I can input school, 4-H, chores and whatever else needs to be done.  I can assign one or more people to complete tasks.  I can print out checklists, or the kids can log in  and check off their lists online.  It automatically keeps a transcript and grade book that I can custom weight.  To me it pretty much handles all I need.  It even allows me to move lessons around when the stomach flu strikes and we need to move the entire year forward a day or two. There is a lot of chatter on the internet forums about online planners.  This is the planner I am using* and that we find works very well for our crazy, busy household.

In addition to this, I adore the Confident Mom's FREE Weekly Household Binder. http://www.theconfidentmom.com/services/classes-products/household-planner-sales-page/
It's very cute!  She has all of the household chores broken down in to manageable chunks so you can clean a little a day.  She also has reminders to drink water, exercise, etc and even a space for menu planning.  I am sure hoping that she will have the 2015 year available for free later this year, because I have really loved the 2014.  I just put it on a flash drive or email it to Office Max and in less than 15 minutes they have it printed in color or black and white and spiral bound.  And I must say that I really <3 and="" as="" ast="" be="" bound="" by="" bypass="" can="" card="" center.="" counter="" directly="" email="" frequent="" gave="" her="" i="" just="" lady="" max="" me="" much="" my="" nbsp="" o="" of="" office="" online="" p="" printing="" said="" seen="" services.="" spiral="" stuff="" the="" there="" things="" think="" to="" too="" upload="" use="" week="" who="" whole="" works="" you="">
Happy planning,
Mrs. P

 *Note:  I still have a paper calendar (spiral bound, of course) to take with me to meetings as does my oldest daughter and we try our best to keep them all synced.