Homeschool Buyers Co-op is the world's largest cooperative buyers club for homeschooling families. This free to join co-op is a family-owned and operated business (since 2005), dedicated to providing top-quality curriculum and homeschooling resources at the lowest price possible. You can save 20-90% on curriculum when you participate in GroupBuys where the more people opt in to buy the item the more the group saves as a whole. Not only that, but this free membership includes other perks as well. You get access to: their database of free homeschool curriculum & other resources, free homeschool classifieds, field trip finder, educational contests & scholarships for homeschooled kids, homeschool conferences and events, writing tips, homeschool ID card templates, 30 day free trial of Homeschool Planet, deals of the week special offers, smart points rewards you can earn, and becoming an affiliate. I love Homeschool Buyers Co-op because it has saved me money on curriculum and homeschooling resources. I am so glad to be a part of it.
Homeschool Buyers Co-op gave me a full year of their Homeschool Planet program for free to try out for myself for use with both my home and my homeschool. Homeschool Planet is an awesome full featured planner that not only plans your homeschool day, but every other aspect of your life as well. You do not have to download anything special to use it and it works on any device with a web browser and a broadband Internet connection since it is entirely online. You can use it to schedule classes, assignments, appointments, events, and daily chores. You can also make to do lists and shopping lists. It is so easy to use and very flexible.
How We Are Using It:
Since we usually take off our homeschool and just do relaxed unschooling during the summer, my family has been using the Homeschool Planet so far to fill in fun stuff we have planned and appointments that we have scheduled. We love all the features so far and love the fact that we can print off our calendar or lists if we want to. I have found that Homeschool Planet is so much simpler to use than bound planners or ones printed on paper because of the automatic rescheduling feature it has. No more having to rewrite whole pages just because of one change. You can effortlessly shift things around, even whole schedules, within Homeschool Planet. When you have filled out the calendar everyone in your family with an email added will be getting Daily Digests by email with their own schedule, assignments, and chores for the day so they can keep track of their own stuff. There are also both email and text message reminders that you can set up within the program.
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| Automatic Rescheduling Helper. (stock photo) |
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| Online Help Video. (stock photo) |
When I first launched Homeschool Planet I was able to click on a link to watch a helpful how-to tutorial video of a brief overview of the features in the program. It was very informative and told me exactly what to expect. I liked that it started out like this so you can get a feel for the program before you try to dive into it on your own. There are also a bunch of tutorials listed in the help section of the planner.
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| This is how the screen looks as you put in Profile information for each member of your family. (stock photo) |
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| You can also check attendance from the profile box. (stock photo) |
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| From the profile box you can tell it to make an individual separate log in and pick what each person has access to. (stock photo) |
The whole thing is very easy to customize. When you put in individual family members you can put in pictures for their avatars, update name, grade, email, and cell phone. You can put in each member of your family to have it show their schedules individually or all together on the different modes. You can let individual family members have their own password as a separate log in to have access to check off their stuff and be emailed or text messaged their schedules and plans as well. In the settings you can edit all sorts of things to make it more personalized. I love that they have different display themes to choose from also. My favorite is the horse themes and the butterfly ones. I hope they get a lot more to choose from too because I like to change the themes to what I am feeling and what holiday is coming up...just like I love to decorate my home.
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| Calendar view month format (stock photo) |
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| Calendar view day format (stock photo) |
There are three modes that are within Homeschool Planet: Calendar view, Planner view, and the third is the Resources view...
- Within the Calendar view you can toggle between day, week, and month. In day and week you can see hours of the day listed on the side so you can schedule things at a certain times. You can also go back and forth with arrows for months previous or coming up. If you click on the S in either corner you can hide or show weekends. A popup window will appear to ask you what you want to add if you click on a day and certain time. You may click class, birthday (which also includes other significant holidays/special events), or everything else. When you add things you can specify its highlight color according to a certain category; for example, church or doctor/dental. You can also specify what activity it is, add notes, for whom it is for, and if it repeats itself somehow. It is so easy to add everything to the calendar that needs to be scheduled.
- Within the Planner view are mostly the same features as the Calendar view except that it is in the form of a list instead of a calendar.
- The Resources view shows you all the books, DVDs, websites, etc. that you are using for your lessons. I like that you can easily add books by ISBN number to make filling out the forms easier. Filling everything out is very straightforward.
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| Planner view day format (stock photo) |
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| Resources view (stock photo) |
I love how easy it is to set up the school year from within the settings so you can then add classes/subjects and their scheduled assignments and lessons on the Calendar and Planner view. You can tell it what days you are actually homeschooling and what days you are taking off. You can also tell it what holidays you observe. When you create a class you can add a subject, title, for whom it is for, and when & what time it will be happening. You can also add information for the lesson plan: assignments, notes, grades & transcript creation, tracked hours & attendance, and resources. I love the fact that you can copy any lesson you make and use it later for another student.
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| Reports Assignment List (stock photo) |
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| Grading Helper (stock photo) |
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| Transcript creator (stock photo) |
Also, there are widgets on the sidebar that you can add or take away. I absolutely love the shopping list and to do list widget on the side. You can pick your stores and make individual lists according to what store has the item on sale. These are also so easy to be sent to your smartphone, sent as text to your spouse when they are out and about, have printed off, or sent to email. I'd love a widget for more meal planning preparation. I also love the weather, daily quote, and Bible verse widgets that change everyday. It is nice to have a scripture to wake up to when checking the schedules and I love knowing what the weather is going to be like also. I'd like to see them expand this section with even more widgets as well in the future.
Do you want to make your life easier and more organized? Is a regular planner making you crazy because of all the rescheduling? Look no further than Homeschool Buyers Co-op Homeschool Planet! Make this homeschool scheduler part of your life today! I recommend this online homeschool planner that also plans so much more to everyone who homeschools!
BUY IT
Once you have a free membership to Homeschool Buyers Co-op, just log in to Homeschool Buyers Co-op and sign up for the free 30 day trial of Homeschool Planet. There you can check it out for yourself without obligation or risk. If you like what you see after the free trial is up you may subscribe for only $65/year or $6.95/month. All your information you entered with the trial will be preserved so you can use Homeschool Planet without interruption.
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Read other reviews for the Homeschool Buyers Co-op Homeschool Planet...
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