Homeschool Planet

Today, I get the pleasure of introducing you to Homeschool Planet,  an online planner from Homeschool Buyer's Co-op.  I am going to say at the beginning, that this did not work well for us, and I will explain why at the end, but it is still a valuable tool you may find helpful in your homes.

There are A LOT of great benefits of Homeschool Planet...probably my single favorite is the AUTOMATIC RESCHEDULE function...miss a day, week month, etc and you are able to reschedule all of that work by pushing it forward...this SERIOUSLY is my favorite function.  I have planned out MONTHS of plans only to have things go awry and then all that work is garbage.  This is the best thing ever!  I tip my hat to you Homeschool Planet!

My second favorite function is the planning out your school year tool.  You select the days you school or don't, the time you have off, start and stop dates, etc.  This is a WONDERFUL function as you begin to shape your days...I know this seems small, but I seriously LOVED IT!

Ok, so pros or what I liked about Homeschool Planet:

You can give assignments to more than one child at a time if the info is the same with just a simple click...EASY!

You get email updates for your calendar and assignments, etc

You can track attendance and create a transcript

The dashboard is WONDERFUL...you see your calendar, family members (with pictures if you like), you can add widgets, (like a shopping list, memory verse, weather, daily quote) which customizes what you see each time you log in. Oh and you can CHANGE the background theme...this became VERY IMPORTANT as I began to work with Homeschool Planet.

It is pretty intuitive and easy to learn and there are several tutorials available to help you begin.  This is great for those of us (ME) who aren't as tech-y as others!

The Customer Service was AMAZING!  This is such an important thing for me.

And Cons or what did not work for us...

I accidentally assigned the same lesson everyday through the end of our school year.Rather than an automatically filled in date being in the box when you are adding a class, I would love to see that be blank.  Oh and it assigns it to the END OF YOUR SCHOOL YEAR...Delete and begin again.  This was a SMALL irritation, not a HUGE problem.

The layout when you have all the classes is a bit much for me to take in among the regular calendar items...looks cluttered and hard to see among the many entries.  There are both planner and calendar views, but I did not see much difference between the two.  You can color code which helps but I think I would like to see a greater difference between the two views.

I did not like that I had to be a member of the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op to use the planner.  I got several emails over the review period that were not something I was interested in.

Price- The price puts this out of range in my home.  It is $65 a year or $6.95 a month.  My regular planner is less than half that price. 

It was hard to get to the computer to get to the lesson plan...I personally function better with a paper planner.  This was the kicker for me EVEN with the automatic rescheduler.  I just love my pen and paper.  Mobile access in regard to my planner means I can pick it up and throw it into my bag.

See what my friends at Home and School Mosaics had to say here.  

Still not sure, try it free for 30 days here.  They will not ask you for credit card information, so you do not have to worry about any charges unless you sign up.