So it’s that time of the year again, when homeschooling moms set forth looking for the perfect planner for the upcoming school year. I have tried so many planners I stopped counting …lets examine all the ones that have failed me:
Planner failures:
The Etsy design cute, customization, downloadable and eats up all your dang ink to print out, then you end up going over your instant ink monthly plan and spending about what it would cost to buy one already put together in overage charges.
The traditional teacher planner, sooo not for the Home school Mom well at least not this Mom. You spend hours trying to customize it to work for you and end up not using it at all because you just don’t have that kind of time. Oh and let’s not forget the mountains of washi tape and stickers you end up accumulating trying to cover stuff up. I seriously had to get my life right with the washi and sticker issue because the cost was eating into my homeschool budget.
Then there’s is old faithful where you just build it from scratch yourself with the help of TPT (Teacher Pay Teacher), Pinterest, YouTube and Homeschooling mom bloggers created templates (ladies I want to personally thank you for all your help, because the struggle is real) . Now old faith usually works for the most part because she isn’t judgemental and she is of your own creation sorta. All of the above planners are great they offered something that I was attracted to and I felt would work for us, but something went wrong on my end.
Now with all this said it brings me to the planner I used this past school year…You see a good friend of mine who happens to be vlogger homeschool mom, her and I spent weeks I MEAN LITERALLY WEEKS discussing the pros and cons of 2 planners. In the end we settled on one and we were confident in our decision….PROUD!! So tell me why we both ended up not using the thing towards the last 5 months of school. The funny part was neither of us told the other until a conversation came up about planning, which now included another home school mom and all 3 of us had tossed our planners and now just resorted to writing down our lessons on a one page sheet of paper each week.
So why I am telling you all this? Homeschooling is all about trials and errors, one size doesn’t fit all. You have to be okay with things not working out like you planned and be open to change. You will go through several planners, curriculum, co-ops, classroom set ups etc..until you find what works for you. Your ultimate goal is finding what works for you it may take some time but I promise you will get there. Another good friend of mine who happens to be a blogger and a unschooler gave me some of the best advice when I was pregnant with my son and had all these plans for my delivery…she said “childbirth is unpredictable” those 3 words have stayed with me over the last 5 years and when I feel like I am losing it I just think….
…homeschooling is unpredictable .”
So what did I decide for this year? I have decided to go with the Plum Paper Homeschool Planner. I just received it this morning so I am still checking it and plan to do a review at the end of July. So far I can say I am pretty happy with it 😊!
Until next time,
Mom
Little Learner and Mom 