Schoolhouse Crew Review: Homeschool Planet

Are you familiar with Homeschool Buyer's Co-op?  Homeschool Buyer's Co-op is the largest buyer's club for homeschooling families.  They give homeschoolers great deals on great products by purchasing them as group buys.  They also offer a variety of free and useful resources.  Joining the co-op is free.  Recently we were offered an opportunity to review their home/homeschool planner Homeschool Planet.


Homeschool Planet is an easy to use online planner for both your home and school.  All you need to have to use Homeschool Planet is an internet connection.  You are able to customize this planner to suit whatever your needs are.  Everything you need for home and school is all in one place.  You can easily schedule assignments, appointments, chores, activities and more.  Use it to create your school schedule, count your school days, track your grades, and create your transcripts.  Add in websites, notes, books, and DVDs to your lessons.  Create and send shopping lists.  You can have separate log ins for everyone in your family so they can check off heir completed tasks.  Daily and weekly digest emails can be sent to each person with their lists of assignments, chores, and appointments.  And if you rather have a paper copy in front of you, you also have the capability to print in either black and white or color.

Homeschool Buyer's Co-op is offering a free 30 day trial of Homeschool Planet.  All you have to do is become a member of the Co-op ( free to sign up) and sign up for a free trial.  You do not have to put in any credit card information for the trial.  If you decide to subscribe after the trial you can do so by paying $65 for a year or $6.95 a month and they will add that time to the end of your free trial. You will keep everything you have entered in to the planner.

I am NOT a lesson planning homeschooler.  I do not write out lesson plans.  The biggest reason why is that the one year I spent a ton of time writing lesson plans in a paper planner, I did not account for things like unexpected field trips, or possible sick days and we never did the assigned tasks on the days I had planned.  It made me feel like I had wasted my time.  Since Homeschool Planet is a planner for home and school though, I figured there would be things I could use it for besides lesson planning and I was right!

It was very easy to get started on Homeschool Planet.  There are several video tutorials that explain the various features.  I was able to easily put in all of the family members and set up the text message feature.  I tested that out by entering a shopping list and texting it to myself and was very happy when it worked!  I started entering in different activities and appointments that we had coming up into the calendar.  I loved the color coded activities and the ability to customize them.  I made 4 H activities green, archery blue, and medical/dental yellow.  When the school year starts up again I will be able to add in different colors for things like food co-ops, gymnastics, soccer, etc... You also can easily select who the appointment or activity includes.  It really was very easy to put it all in and I love having everything I need on the calendar.  You can choose whether you want to view a day, week, or a month.  The next thing I need to work on is getting back to meal planning.  I can enter in planned meals and have them on the calendar with everything else!

I thought I would try out the lesson planning section because I knew that would be something other homeschoolers would be interested in.  It is so easy!  You can first customize your school calendar. That is something paper planners cannot do.  I was able to set up our 4 day a week schedule, choose our staring and ending dates, cross out days that I knew for sure we would be taking off like vacations and holidays.  The planner keeps count of your scheduled days so if you are in a state that requires a certain number of days per year you will be able to easily tell if you have enough scheduled.  There is also a spot to track hours and grades.  You can add as many subjects as you want and create assignments for each child.  If you have multiple children doing the same assignments you can easily set those up as well.  And the biggest plus?  You can move some or all of your assignments forward!  So if you end with a day that you have scheduled too much you can move the assignments you didn't get to.  Or, if you end up with a sick child or a last minute field trip or vacation you can move them all forward and it will adjust the days you already have scheduled. You don't have to waste time re-entering information!



There are so many great features to Homeschool Planet.  If you are looking for a planner that will manage your entire home including your homeschool, I urge you to sign up for the 30 day free trial and see all of the things that this planner can do.

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, visit the Crew Blog!