Plan Your Year with the Schoolhouse Student Planners...

The opportunity to check out one of the Schoolhouse Student Planners dropped into my email box on the very day I was looking at the planners I already have for organizing my students' work and thinking, "I love X in this planner, but Y in this one is great. Both need Z from the third planner...why don't they put these things all in one planner?" I was pondering the idea of copying a few pages from two of them, stapling the copies to the pages in another, and trying to come up with some compilation of all three because I was tired of juggling the information in three locations.

Voila! It was one of those wonderful occassions where I asked, and the Lord porvided (in a way obvious to me) IMMEDIATELY. What a blessing!

Within an hour of requesting the 2010-2011 Middle Grades Schoolhouse Planner (to use with my seventh-grader, and hopefully adapt for my younger sudents as well), I discovered it was ready for download. I eagerly opened the file and was amazed at the 278 pages of content that is included in this planner. In fact, I was almost overwhelmed by the amount of information in this planner...there is so much more than I will ever use. 

Once I scrolled back and checked out the detailed Table of Contents, I got a handle on what was there and gleefully noted that there were editable, printable pages for ALL of the things I had wanted to see in one planner just that morning...and then some. The real substance of the planner lies in the scheduling pages, organizing tools, and goal-setting sheets. But the planner is full of fun and useful little bonuses, like cooking conversion charts, timelines, and geographic reference lists, as well. These will be great for personalizing the planner, once the real work of creating the "perfect planner" is done.

Here's what I wound up printing to make my student's customized planner:

• Beginning and Ending Page
• Monthly Calendars
• Weekly planning pages
• Yearly, Semester, and Monthly Goal Pages
• Educational Objective Sheets
• To-Do Lists
• Course of Study Sheets for each subject
• End of Year Evaluation Forms and Grade Sheets
• Test Score Recording Sheet
• Assignment and Due Date Sheets
• Attendance Chart
• High School Transcript Sheets (to use for my older son, who suddenly needs a transcript by the end of the month!)
• High School Planning Sheet for Tex
• Library Items Sheets for the actual library and the Bookmobile
• Audio/Video Log
• Loaned and Borrowed List
• Books Read This Year Sheet
• Books Read to Me This Year Sheet
• Field Trip Log Sheet
• Extra-Curricular Activities Log Sheet
• A few Unit Study Record Sheets (for when we all study something together)
• Bible Memory Record
• Regular Memory Work Record
• Discipleship Record
• Community Service Record and Log Sheet
• Research Paper Project List
• Possible Future Plans List (so we can explore some career ideas this year)
• Musical Instrument Practice Sheet
• Sports and Fitness Log (to record time spent with his horse or riding his bike on the eight-mile loop near our house)
• Daily Chore Chart
• One of These Days I Would Like to...Sheet
• Prayer Journal Sheets
• Bible Study and Sermon Notes
• Bible Reading Highlights Sheets
• Website/Password Quick Reference Sheet
• Family Tree Sheets
• Family Rules Sheet
• Important Dates Reference Sheets
• Important Phone Numbers
• Common Latin and Greek Root Sheets
• Caldecott and Newberry Lists (Tex read many of these last year)
• Thirteen Colonies by Date
• US Presidents and Their Wives
• US States and Capitals (he can mark off the postcards we receive here, too)
• ABCs of Landforms
• Famous Musicians and Famous Artists

Whew!! That took quite a bit of paper to print up, but now ALL of our stuff will be in one location. The truth is that no planner designed by someone other than yourself, will ever be exactly what you want. People include in planners what they see to be important...and that may differ from what you'd choose. What you'd choose might even differ from year to year. This year we are doing the United States Geography and some history. Next year we will be doing World Geography and Ancient History, so different supplemental pages would be useful. Some years we rely more upon unit studies and need to keep track of more book reports and projects. Other years, we use more textbooks and need to keep track of more grades.

By buying The Middle School Schoolhouse Planner for $19.00, you get the best of all possible outcomes. You get a fully-customized product that perfectly suits your family in whatever season of life you are in. You can use one planner to print sheets for multiple students (I could actually print more pages and make a planner for my littler ones using what is available here), and you can customize them as you see fit.

The biggest drawback I saw to this method was the drain on my printing ink, but considering it is a once in a year thing, and that my student and I will be so much better organized now, I think it is worth it. I also am not really a big fan of three-ring binders, which seems to be the going solution for storing the planner pages. But I already have a plan for that. I am thinking of requesting one of those cool binding machines for Christmas...useful, but fun, too. What do you think? ;-)

I hope you will think about checking out The Middle School Schoolhouse Planner at The Old Schoolhouse Store. You can click HERE and order your e-book planner right now for immediate download. I do think it is a great value for the money you will spend, especially if it gets all of your information into one location...think about all the time you will save, and the valuable organizational skills your students will be gaining as they learn to be accountable for their time.

Click HERE to see a sample of this item.

You can read reviews about the product HERE.

Currently, there is a GREAT deal going on HERE at the Old Schoolhouse Store. Buy a bundle of the Primary Schoolhouse Planner and the Middle Grades Schoolhouse Planner for a mere $10.00! You can't beat that! I don't know how long this fantastic deal will last, so head on over to snag yours TODAY!

Thanks for reading. I hope I gave you some information you can use. I want you to know that I did receive a complimentary copy of the Middle Grades Schoolhouse Planner in order to write an honest review about my experiences with this product. I hope this review was helpful to you. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me.

Blessings to you for an organized year!

Heather