Home Schooling Resources

I’ve been chosen to be one of the product reviewers for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, so you get the benefit of reading my reviews at this blog.

To start things off I’m going to tell you about the The 2009 Schoolhouse Planner. It’s quite a book, let me tell you. Some people might be put off by the ebook format, but it’s really a fun way to look at a book. This one is 375 pages long so I chose to view 4 pages at a time.

There is a monthly activity that starts in July and goes through till the next June. The monthly activity has a theme that gives you an article related to the theme (usually with a chart) along with a resource list and 2 recipes.

Then there are several more sections that include forms categorized into homeschool and household categories. The homeschool forms are just awesome. You will never use all the pages, but the beauty of this planner is that any learning style or method of homeschooler can use this book. It covers every aspect imaginable. There are resources and forms for the formal homeschooler all the way to the unschooler. There are a host of planning pages along with record keeping pages that help you keep track of every aspect of homeschooling you could ever imagine.

The household forms are great too. If you’re used to using a daytimer, I don’t see why you would need to purchase anything else but this planner. They have thought of everything.

There are enough styles of calendars to suit any style. If you like charts, you will love this planner. Even if you don’t like charts, you will love this planner. It truly covers every type of personality imaginable. You could make some of these forms yourself, but who has time to do this?

The Schoolhouse Planner covers all ages too. They have resources and forms for preschoolers all the way up through high school. I can’t think of another aspect of homeschooling that could even possibly be squeezed into this ebook. They have truly thought of everything.

The only part of the planner that I didn’t love were the recipes. Some of the recipes use convenience foods, like cream of mushroom soup, which we don’t use, but I can easily make substitutions for this though. There are some recipes made from scratch and even one gluten-free corn-free recipe that do fit in more with our style.

I printed off a ton of pages from this planner (High School Transcript form, Famous Artists, US Presidents facts, Kitchen Conversions Cheat Sheet, ABCs of Landforms Worksheets, and Getting Into College to name a few) that I will be able to use to spur many hours of homeschool learning. I have some teenagers here and have not seen a nice “Getting Into College” time schedule with pointers like the one in this planner. You could almost use just this planner along with some language arts and math and you could be all set for the year.

I love the way that you can link from the table of contents directly to the page where that item is located. For example, if you see an area about homeschool coops in the table of contents, you could click on that and it takes you directly to the page where that information is located.

If you have been thinking about getting this planner and wondering whether it would be worth the $39.oo, think no longer! This is well worth every penny and more that you would spend on it.

Originally posted 2009-06-30 23:55:21. Republished by Blog Post Promoter