The Best Online Planner: Homeschool Planet Digital Planner Review
Are you curious about digital planners? Today, I am sharing an honest Homeschool Planet digital planner review. We have been using the Homeschool Planet digital planner for our 2023-2024 school year, and I can honestly say that I will never go back to paper planners!
In this article, I will share what I love about the planner and the many awesome features it contains. Let’s dive right in!
This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase anything via the links, I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Homeschool Planet Digital Planner FAQ
A digital planner can seem strange if you are used to paper planners. You may even be wondering if it will work for your children. In my opinion, a digital planner can simplify your life a lot! Here are some answers to other questions that you may be wondering about.
Is it better to use a paper planner or the Homeschool Planet digital planner?
A digital planner can take some getting used to, but once you do you will see how flexible and versatile it is.
Here are some other advantages of a digital planner over a paper planner:
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Environmentally friendly
A typical paper planner usually has around 100-200 physical pages. If each parent and each child has a paper planner this really adds up! Of course, you can recycle the planner when you are finished with it, but a digital planner has zero paper waste.
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Customizable
A digital planner works well if you like to plan weeks or months ahead. It works particularly well if you like to plan out your entire school year. However, what if you plan out your schedule days or weeks in advance and then your family is sick for a week and misses school? Or, you have a baby and you have to shift the schedule around? A digital planner allows you to shift your school days with a few clicks. No eraser necessary!
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Adaptable
A digital planner really can be adapted to your homeschool style and needs. Charlotte Mason families and unschooling families can use a digital planner! The Homeschool Planet digital planner is especially adaptable to different homeschool styles and needs.
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Saves money
A good homeschool planner can cost $50 or more. You will need a planner for the primary homeschooling parent doing the lesson planning as well as a planner for each child (ages 7 and up). Even if you purchase simple student planners, the more children you have the more the total cost will go up. The Homeschool Planet digital planner can cover the whole family for one annual price and save a lot of money!
How much does Homeschool Planet digital planner cost?
Cost is always a valid concern for homeschool families. More than likely, you will be purchasing a planner for yourself and one for each child ages 7 and up. It’s great for kids this age to start using a planner to allow them to start becoming more independent with some of their homeschool tasks. If you have a large family, purchasing a planner for each person can really add up!
Homeschool Planet has 2 options for payment:
- $7.95 per month
- 69.95 per year (which comes out to $5.83 per month)
This is a great money saver. If you usually buy a planner for mom and one for 2 more children you will save money.
Now, you also need to consider if you will be purchasing any of the Homeschool Planet Lesson plans. This will, of course, add to the cost. However, if you plan to use curricula for multiple children, then the lesson plans are definitely worth it. Homeschool Planet also offers bundle deals if you buy the lessons for multiple years/grades/
I will be talking more about lesson plans later in the article, but the prices of digital lesson plans run from $5.95-$14.95. Most are around $9.95 each.
How does Homeschool Planet digital planner work?
Homeschool Planet is a very powerful, detailed and impressive system. I will break down how to prepare your school year in 4 main steps.
1. Make family profiles
First, you will make profiles for yourself and each child.
2. Map out your school year dates
Next, you will choose the dates for your school year. I absolutely love this feature. You choose your start and end dates (which can be changed at any time) and you can also plan out holidays and days off. The planner has Christian and secular holidays for you to choose as well as the option to add your own.
3. Start building and planning your school year
Then, you start building your school year. You can choose what days of the week you will do school. You can even plan down to the hour if you wish.
4. Import or create your lesson plans
Next, you will either import your purchased lesson plans or create your own (more on this below). Once your lesson plans are input, you choose what days you want to do each subject and the order you wish to do the subjects in.
Alternatively, if you lean more towards unschooling or a less structured approach you can still use Homeschool Planet! If you prefer to document each school day after you complete it, you can just make some separate classes and add in the details later on.
Once you set up your school days, it will appear as a checklist for you and your children. You can set it so that each child only sees his or her list, and they can access it on a computer or tablet.
Is Homeschool Planet digital planner a good large family homeschool planner?
Yes! I think Homeschool Planet works awesome for both small and large families. As I mentioned before, you will save money with the family membership that can be shared with as many family members as you would like.
The layout and options also make it easy for the parent to see the work for each child as well as shared family work.
Your children simply have to log in to their personal profile (that you can set up with their own login password and name) and easily see their schoolwork for that day or for that week.
A fun bonus feature is that each family member can personalize his or her own account with favorite colors and a seasonal background. So fun!
Can you use Homeschool Planet digital planner on tablets, phones, and laptops?
Homeschool planet is really best viewed on a laptop or desktop computer. The parent doing the lesson planning definitely needs to have access to a desktop or laptop for all of the planning and scheduling.
That said, if you or your child simply want to view a daily or weekly schedule, you can view them on a tablet or even smartphone. If your goal is to quickly view and check off the daily checklist a phone or tablet will work. Your child will love the independence of logging into his or her own account and checking off the boxes for their homeschool day.
Highlights and Feature of the Homeschool Planet Digital Planner
There are SO many awesome features and highlights of the Homeschool Plante digital planner. I will try to cover my favorites today. I suggest that you play around with the planner to really get a feel of the different ways that it can be used. Thankfully, their website has MANY helpful tutorials and their customer support is absolutely fantastic.
Homeschool Planet Digital Planner Lesson Plans
One really awesome feature of Homeschool Planet is the access to dozens of lessons plans from various homeschool curricula company. Sometimes, you can find digital curricula bundles with the lesson plan which is nice! Especially when they run a sale.
While they don’t feature every company, some popular companies include:
Flexibility of an online academic planner
My favorite feature of Homeschool Planet is how flexible it is when planning and executing your school year.
At the beginning of the year, I chose our start and end dates for school. Then, I mapped out Holy Days of obligation, favorite feast days and solemnities to celebrate, and other holidays and vacations that we planned to take off.
I used a combination of purchased and custom lesson plans and input some all at once and some a week or month in advance. This really helped me to see how quickly or slowly I wanted us to proceed through each subject.
As you know, life HAPPENS in a homeschool! Kids get sick, moms get morning sickness, appointments and obligations interrupt the daily and/or weekly flow, and kids work slower or faster than planned. I found that it was very easy to shift plans and schedules around so I knew when and how we would be getting each lesson done. This brought a great sense of peace as our homeschool year went on.
Using a digital planner for state record-keeping
Currently, we homeschool in New York which is one of the “strictest” homeschooling states. New York requires 4 quarterly reports per year and a year-end review (or testing).
Homeschool Planet has incredible features for keeping track of attendance, hours of instruction, and detailed lists of what you have covered. As long as your lesson plans have all of the details, you can quickly and easily generate a report to use for creating your quarterly reports and year-ed reviews (see an excerpt from one of the Homeschool Planet reports below). This saved me SO much time throughout the year! Everything I needed was in one place.
Customer Service
There are so many functions and capabilities of the Homeschool Planet software that I sometimes couldn’t immediately figure out how to get it to do what I wanted. Customer service to the rescue! In times of need, I simply filled out a ticket and one of the lovely Homeschool Planet staff would get back to me within 1-2 days. Usually, their response included a personal video tutorial answering my question! I love this!!
The Homeschool Planet Digital Planner is the best online planner for students
Children may be ready for a planner in 1st or 2nd grade. Basically, whenever a child is comfortable reading and writing on their own and they are ready for some independence.
Children may prefer the Homeschool Planner digital planner over the paper planners because:
- they can independently access their homeschool assignments on a family or personal computer and/or tablet.
- it eliminates paper waste
- their daily, weekly, and monthly tasks appear as a convenient checklist
- they can independently see what work needs to be completed when
- they can independently check off their work so you know they completed it
All in one family planner online: Chores, lists, and other features
In addition to being an awesome tool for planning your homeschool assignments, you can also include family chores, grocery lists, reminders, and more! There are a variety of widgets that can help you organize all aspects of your family life. You can also color code everything to make it easily visible. In addition, you can send email and text reminders to family members if you wish.
I love using Homeschool Planet for my lunch and dinner meal planning. The kids can easily see what we are having for each meal and it helps me stay organized.
Homeschool Planet Free Trial
There are so many awesome features of the Homeschool Planet digital planner, and I felt that this article barely scratched the surface!
The best way to determine if Homeschool Planet is a good fit for your family is by trying the 30-day, no obligation free trial. You also get 1 free lesson plan with the free trial with is a great deal! You also do NOT need to give any credit card information for the trial.
Follow the link below if you would like to give it a try.
More posts to help you with homeschool schedules
Need more advice on planning your homeschool?
Be sure to check out this post which includes a step-by-step guide to creating a daily homeschool schedule.
You may also enjoy this post about creating a free preschool homeschool curriculum.
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