Friday, August 29, 2008

The Schoolhouse Planner Review


I had a chance to review/preview The Schoolhouse Planner from The Old Schoolhouse Online Store recently. My first thought was “OH MY WORD. 247 pages. WOW. That’s a whole lot of ink. I honestly thought that if I were to only want to print half of it, I would be shocked.

Guess what? I was shocked.

To someone who desires to be organized, but faces reality daily in knowing that God did not create me that way, I was skeptical that the planner would be useful for people like me. You know the type. We read all of these organizational blogs, and drool over the schedules that our fellow homeschool moms are following from the first day of school. But in our reality, our little world, it just doesn’t work that way. The Schoolhouse Planner is a downloadable, user friendly planner. It is an interactive PDF format and it is fun to use.

Each month begins with a calender, has a fact sheet (or in my house, we refer to it as trivia), which range in topics anywhere from Timeline of Inventions to the Periodic Table of Elements. How timely that I saw the topic of Countries and Capitals in the middle of watching the Olympics. I had just asked my husband, “Is St. Kitts and Nevis even a country?” Thanks to the planner, I learned that yes, it is a country. And now I know the capital is Basseterre.
There are also very informative homeschool articles, resource lists from the Schoolhouse Store and monthly recipes.

After twelve months of planning sections, we come to the homeschool form section of the planner. After spending hours upon hours searching for forms on the internet, this section is a blessing. There was thought given to all types of homeschoolers, even providing a form for the unschoolers to the preschoolers.

It gets even better. There are countless numbers of household forms. From menu planning, grocery shopping to monthly household maintenance and cleaning reminders. (Oooh, I did not know I should clean out under my refrigerator every month. I am so far behind.)
This planner does not disappoint. I was very pleasantly surprised that I will be printing off the majority of pages and will use it frequently. About the only thing I will omit from my printing schedule is the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation. Yes, they are all in there.

No, I’m not kidding.

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