Planning: Digital, Paper, or Both?
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I love planners. A couple of weekends ago I was on a date with Honeybear and we stopped in an office supply store. He left me behind in the planner and office supply section. He wandered over someplace else because he knew I had found a bit of my heaven. When I say planners I don’t just mean lesson planners or homeschool planners. I love home management planners and meal planners and plain calendar collections. I have digital planners, paper planners, planning software and even a planner based in Excel! Just last week I received the 7 Minute Life Daily Planner to review. (Look for the review Mid-September!)
On Monday I talked about Planning: The School Calendar. I use the School Year Calendar tool in Homeschool Tracker Plus (HST + )to create the school calendar. This is a downloadable software. Unfortunately, it is no longer being offered but Homeschool Tracker does offer Homeschool Tracker Online. I love Homeschool Tracker. It is the tool I use for long term, re-useable, undated, lesson plans. It is the tool I use most frequently for creating assignment sheets. I created BooBear’s high school transcript using HST +.
As much as I love HST and the ability to type things up on the computer, in my heart I think I am still a pen and paper kind of gal. That’s why I posted about Planning: The Course of Study. I do use a combo of digital (PDF) and print when doing some of my course of study planning.
Some things are just easier for me to have in paper and pen format. This week I’ve been using the Curriculum Planning Sheet in the Hey Mama! Schoolhouse Planner 2014-2015. This is the coil bound printed planner, a smaller version with some of the same great forms as the 2014-2015 Schoolhouse Digital Planner. I’m not using this form in the traditional sense though. I am using it to list out curriculum I already own but want to use. I’ll use the Curriculum Planning Sheet to help me finalize the Course of Study sheet. Thanks to the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I have so much curriculum that I often forget what I do have. I could do this on the computer but I really like having these sheets printed out and bound together so that I can page through them.
I will be using a combination of paper, digital and computer based tools to plan our lessons and track our progress. Though I am using the Curriculum Planner Sheets in the printed Hey Mama! Planner, I am using the blank weekly pages for Supergirl. I really can’t get too detailed too far in advance with her but I need to do something. I’ll use the weekly planner pages to jot down some basics that I want to cover that week and then fill in each day what we actually get done so that it becomes a record of work accomplished. I’ll be using the Books Read This Year pages for Supergirl to record the books or stories she reads to me and to record the books read aloud to her.
Tailorbear wants more accountability. She needs a more detailed assignment sheet, not just a check off list of subjects. We decided the Student Log Book we’re reviewing with Turtlegirl just isn’t going to be enough for Tailorbear. I’ll be printing and then binding a quarterly planner for her. It will include monthly calendars with NO School days clearly marked. I’m creating these from the 2014-2015 High School Schoolhouse Digital Planner. I’ll be using Homeschool Tracker to create specific assignment sheets and I’ll print those out a quarter (roughly 9 school weeks) at a time. I think I’ll also include some printed pages from the Digital Planner for a Reading Log and tracking hours. She’s excited because she’ll have a bound, personalized planner that she can use to keep herself focused.
This will be an interesting year for me. Three students. Three different planner styles. One teacher mom. How do you prefer to plan? Do you use computer based? Digital? Paper? Or are you like me and use what you like from different sources?
This was Day 3 of Planning. Did you catch Planning: The School Calendar and Planning: The Course of Study? Tomorrow I’ll share Curriculum Favorites and be sure to come back on Friday when I talk about our First Day of Home School Traditions.
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I'm a paper planner person. I love the act of writing it down and seeing it all on paper before me. My kids each have their own little planners this year (my older two) and we'll see how that goes! I'm hoping to get them in the habit of writing everything down. My hubby keeps trying to convince me to go digital but I just can't. I love having it all written out!
ReplyDeleteI, too, am a paper planner type of person. I need to have something on paper in front of me. Although I haven't found a planner that I can stick with, I have lists and things always written down. :-)
ReplyDelete