Homeschool Planet - A Review

Planning and record keeping are two critical areas for each homeschooler. I have found that having a plan helps my day to go smoother and if I communicate that plan with the children it helps them. It is important that I have records of what we have done for our end of the year evaluations and reports.

I love my paper planner but J was desiring to have a list of what he is to do. He wanted a list he could check off when things were complete. About the time that he mentioned that I was given the opportunity to review Homeschool Planet and online planner from Homeschool Buyers Co-op.


Homeschool Planet is an online planner, a calendar, an organiser, and so much more. My reason for reviewing and using Homeschool Planet was mainly for the homeschool planner portion. I feel like I have just begun to use this. I am excited about all that can be done with this planner.

Since I wanted to be able to give J a printout of his assignments I began by entering his information. I found it relatively easy to enter this though a few classes were entered twice and so I had to delete it. Enter the class and then you can designate what days of the week. That helps when you need to rearrange assignments. It is very easy to customise the classes. After you have the classes set up, begin entering the assignments. You can enter one assignment and if it goes in order (lesson 1, lesson 2, etc) then you can set the planner to put it in. Then you can print a report which can be customised. J and I are still trying to figure out which report we like.

As I started to plan 2015-2016, the first thing I did was look at the calendar, I entered the UK holidays (I love that it had that already in the calendar and I didn't have to dig around to find the holidays). After that, I decided what days we would do school. That was so easy green check mark and it is a school day, click and it becomes a red "x" and no school. There is also a counter of how many school days you have. The counter was very helpful as I play and arrange our year. Arranging our school year was a challenge mainly as I try to work though our desires for time off with the need to get our school requirements.  I did it. I have 194 days scheduled (we need 180-190 days) and we should be finished before home assignment.

An example of the school year calendar

Next is to enter all the classes and how many times it will be done. Then you can print reports. I have been printing reports of what J needed to do each week. I could give him the option of logging in but he is not on the computer enough to give him that feature.

There are video tutorials online that show these and other features.

What do I like?

I like how easy it is to move assignments. Our days don't always go the way I planned and now instead of erasing and erasing, I just click and the assignment and all other assignments are moved down.

I like the way I can easily customise it. The little thing like having a photo of each of us with our assignments. I like how I can add other activities -- football games, music lessons, kids club, and other things can be added. I like that the school assignments don't have to be assigned to a specific time.

I like the variety of ways to print the weekly assignment. I can easily find one that works for J.

There are features that I didn't use. I really don't shop much so shopping lists are not that helpful to me. You can add a widget.

I had a few challenges as I began using the program. I had a few classes listed twice on the schedule. That was easy to correct. I had to figure out how to print just a week of assignments and after a bit of searching I found that.

I have to say that I am impressed with this online planner. Homeschool Buyers Co-op offers a 30 day free trail so you can try it yourself. I also suggest reading other views as there is so much that is in this planner.




Beth