Hey Mama! Planner - A Schoolhouse Crew Review

In March I learned there was a review coming up for The Old Schoolhouse.

They wanted folks to review the new Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner 2016-2017.  It wasn't even printed yet!

I was happy when I learned I'd been selected for the review. This is a quality product, and I love being able to review it and tell my friends about it.

We were told to expect the planners in April. April came and went, and still no planner. I finally received my planner in mid-May. So I've had the planner just over two weeks.

The due date remained unchanged, though, because it is June, and home schooling Mamas are preparing for the next school year! We want all the mamas to know about the Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner! So unlike a normal review, where I show my readers lots of completed work, I will show you a little completed work and tell you all about the Planner.

First of all, the Planner is beautiful! It has a nice sturdy double-wire coil (spiral) binding.

Its front cover is glossy, with photos of antique home and farm tools. Scattered through the pages are pages that highlight photographed items on the cover.

The book has 192 pages in it. The first page is a cover page, and then comes the Table of Contents.

There are year-at-a-glance calendar pages for 2016-2018. The first thing I did when the planner arrived was go to these calendars. The size is nice to work with. You can insert family birthdays, doctor/dentist/eye doctor appointments. I went to the internet and searched up the local school system's schedule for next year: start date, end date, holidays, etc. I noted these on the calendar for my own information, even though we don't follow their schedule. This information is always good to be aware of. Then I went to the schedule for next year for the community college my 11th grader will be taking dual enrollment classes, and I noted semester start and end dates for fall and spring. I penciled in our normal break week (Thanksgiving week) in November (altered by a day to adjust for the college's attendance schedule) and the normal 2-week break in December-January. Spring has two break weeks noted: the one for the public school and the one for the college, which we will follow. Birthdays will be entered, and anniversaries.

Scattered through the pages are encouraging notes to the Mama to read and think about.

There is a section of month-at-a-glance calendars for July, 2016 to June, 2017, and each calendar is preceded by a page for notes for the month.

The calendar section is followed by lesson plan pages for 36 weeks, the number of weeks in a school year. These pages are blank to be filled in with dates, days of the week, subjects, and assignments.

I really don't have assignments figured out yet. I'm not even sure of dates to begin, end and all the holidays I will allow breaks for, so these things are not filled in. To let you know how it might look, here is a page from my Hey Mama! Planner from 2014-2015.

The week-at-a-glance planner pages are followed by pages for monthly goals for each month. This is followed by a section with pages to write out semester goals. This is followed by pages for yearly goals. Each child gets pages in each section, and if you don't have enough pages you are allowed to make copies so you have enough.

There is a section to keep track of attendance, pages provided for two kids. This is (obviously) blank now, since next year isn't here yet!

This is followed by a section to keep track of books read by each student. Here's my page from the 2014-2015 planner.

The reading pages are followed by pages to use to plan out the curriculum you will use during the year for each subject for each child. There is a page to use to write down name, address, phone and email of your Homeschooling Contacts. There are some inspirational pages with writing prompts and story starters, followed by informational pages about the thirteen colonies, a timeline of inventions, U.S. Presidents and their wives, branches of government, and states and capitals.

Helpful for high school is the section on "Creating an Academic Transcript". This is followed by actual forms to use for making the transcript! Next is a section with checklists and skills learned for each child. The last page is a page for "other courses".

What I love:

• I love the format of the weekly planning pages!
• I love the informational pages and the the inspirational messages scattered throughout the planner.
• I love the pages for books read.
• I love the month-at-a-glance calendars.

Ways this could be improved:

• I'd love it for the cover page to have a place that said something like, "This Planner belongs to: ________________________________". That way if I was working on it at Boy Scouts or somewhere, if I misplaced it folks finding it would know who to return it to.
• I'd like the planner better if it had a full 52 weeks worth of planning sheets for the school year.

It's June! Now is the time to buy your planner! What do you need to know? You can get $10 off if you buy before July 15 using the following coupon code:

So think about it. This is a great planner.

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