Planners I Have Loved

Let's talk about planners!

Planners are very important to a home schooling mom. Over the years I have had the opportunity to try out many planners. I have been able to try planners that included everything in one place (home school plus meal planning, medical appointments, and all outside activities) vs. having one planner for school plans in one place, a family calendar on the wall in the kitchen for family commitments, and a list on the fridge for the meal plans for the week. I have tried a computer-based planner that anyone in the family could tap into from any device vs. all planners in print, whether printed out from a word document or written out by hand.

What method works best? Is it a question I can answer? Or is it an answer that varies from year to year?

At one point in my life, with three kids at home (one high school, one middle school and one pre-school), I lived by a schedule similar to the one recommended in the book Managers of Their Homes.

I had a column for each day of the week, with the first column indicating time of day. Each activity had to be scheduled, with time on the schedule for driving. It varied from year to year but went something like this: Child #1 had co-op on Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:30 - 11:30 and violin on Tuesdays from 1:00 to 2:00. Child #2 had flute on Thursdays at 11:00. On Mondays I took child #3 to gymnastics at noon to 1:00. Everyone had 4-H first Wednesday night of the month; and the girls had the church girls program every Monday night. #1 had care group on Tuesday nights, and mom and dad had care group on Thursday. There was a care group leaders' meeting once a month on Fridays, and periodically a church meeting on Sunday evenings. Busy days! I color coded with highlighter to show which child did which activity at a glance.

I could not have survived without my planner, right down to the weekly menu plan, which I kept on the kitchen calendar. Regular updating of the plans was essential.

Years change, and there have been issues of getting non-drivers to jobs or driver's education classes. There have been times of having three drivers and two cars, and making sure someone who needed a car to drive did not get left with an empty driveway and a commitment they were unable to fulfill. 

Years have passed and students have graduated. As we got down to one student only, scheduling got easier, but it is still just as important. Meal plans are still essential to reduce food waste and to minimize unexpected fast-food meals! There have still been church commitments, Boy Scouts, Civil Air Patrol, and additional activities to keep track of.

Last year I was delighted to be able to use Homeschool Planet for most of the year. Yet I found my family inflexible -- they never did learn to log in to check the schedule. They did not add their activities, and they did not look there to see what was going on.

The planning method I have gone back to through the years has been a redundant method. It sounds like extra work, but I keep a calendar in my purse to record things when I am out, and I try always to keep the kitchen calendar up-to-date with my commitments on my purse calendar. I don't like to use a cell phone calendar, because I like to see the entire month at-a-glance. The phone calendars show a dot if there is an activity, but it can mean some obscure aunt's birthday. I don't like having to open the day to see the entry, and I don't like having to check all the hours to see what's coming. I also don't like the mistakes where I have missed something because it got entered as PM instead of AM or vice versa.

For school work, I loved creating a word document for a 36-week daily lesson planner. (I am willing to share my template to those who ask by comment below.) 

I used to keep my dinner menu plans on my kitchen calendar. Now I create my menu plan weekly on a word document, where I also create my shopping list, which gets printed out. After the shopping trip, we fold the paper so the plan shows and post it on the fridge.

So what planners have you used and loved? What are you doing this year? My so is starting college, so I created a Word document for him with the format I discussed above; first column is hours of the day, then a column for Monday through Friday with commitments listed in each column. I am hoping he will find this helpful.

So what kind of planner will you use this year? Do you like to write out your plans in a school planner? Do you double with a calendar? Do you create a word document? Do you use an on-line planner?


Whatever you use, happy planning to you! I pray you have a wonderful school year this year!