The Best Online Homeschool Planners

 

The Best Online Homeschool Planners

You work hard to homeschool your children.  Each day you make a plan and work hard to teach and guide your children in their learning.  But when life doesn’t go as planned and you have to forget your plans for a day, a week, a month, it’s easy to lose where you are and what you are doing in your homeschool.  

In our homeschool, keeping records and plans has been one long experiment, trying one planner after another. I started out with paper and pencil planners.  I found free printable planners on the internet that I could print out and fill in.  These were familiar to me because they were like the planners that I used in the classroom.  However, they did not work well for me.

It usually took about 2-3 hours to plan for each week.  If I was unable to make a plan for a particular week more often than not we just took that week off.  We seldom kept to the schedule that I had set out, and so there was a lot of erasing and rewriting.  I needed a plan, but it frustrated me that I spent all my time making a plan but then I very seldom followed it.    I wanted to find a better way so I started to look into online planners. 

When I began my research I looked for free planners that allowed flexibility in my schedule.  Over the years I have used all three of these planners, and they all have wonderful features.  I will go through the pros and cons of each planner and tell you what I like and dislike about each one.

Homeschool SkedTrack

The first homeschool planner I tried was Homeschool Skedtrack.  Homeschool Skedtrack stands for Homeschool Scheduler and Tracker.  The feature that first drew me to this website was that it is completely free.  You are able to access all features of this product when you sign up for a free account.  Here are some pros and cons of this website:

Pros

• When you first register for an account, you are automatically registered as teacher. 
• You can start anytime during the year, not just at the beginning
• Easy to follow video tutorials to set up your planner
• Once your account is set up, you are able to set the required number of school days for your area, set class hours/day, and set days off and holidays, both common holidays and custom
• Your kids can have their own account with their own password (I loved this part because it fostered independence in them) and check off activities as they complete them.
• Parents need to approve completed activities before the kids can move on  (This was nice so that I was kept up to date on what they were doing.)
• After you login the default page is today’s assignments
• You can put in as many courses as you need ( I even used this for our extracurricular activities and chores)
• Assign activities ahead of time or add them daily as you wish
• You have the ability to copy courses and activities from one student to another
• Keeps a list of the resources that you use for each course
• You can generate report cards and transcripts ( did not use this feature very much because my state does not require report cards or grading in elementary)
• Flexible scheduling so that an uncompleted activity will automatically roll over to the next day.
• Able to access from any device (My kids were able to access this website on their own tablets)

Cons

• There is a specific learning curve in figuring out how to use this site.  Even with the tutorials, I had difficulty figuring out some of the features and how to use them.  (This may only describe me and my ability to get lost really easily)
• You can only look at one student at a time, as well as only one course at a time for that student.  
• I experienced some difficulties with the edit activities page, and several times I lost all of my information because I did not know exactly how to work the merge and resequence feature
• The reports can only be printed by subject, and you need to create a separate report for each
• There is no separate place to write notes (most of my notes are evaluation of how my children are doing in a specific area, so this was a big miss for me)
• There is no family tab, so you have to create separate activities for each child, even if they are doing the same thing

Overall, this planning website has many great features.  If I absolutely wanted to go for the free option, this is the website that I would use.  However, the paid options that I have used I find to be a better fit for my homeschooling needs.

Homeschool Planet

Homeschool Planet is a product of the homeschool buyer’s co-op.  I signed up for a year subscription to this application last summer, and it has some features that I absolutely love and some that I don’t like as much.  Here are some of the pros and cons of this homeschool planner.

Pros

• It has a 30 day free trial period
• If you choose to continue after the trial period, all of your information will be saved and carried over to the paid subscription.
• Has video tutorials
• You are able to create or purchase lesson plans for your resources
• This program will sync with your Google calendar.  (I loved this!  I could see what was on my calendar and fit it in with our daily homeschool schedule!)
• You can put thumbnail pictures on the main page of yourself and your children (I thought that this personalizes the planner a little bit)
• There are different backgrounds and colors that you can use to personalize your planner
• You can color code your planner by student and class
• You can show calendars for students together or individually
• There are eight possible widgets that you can use around your planner on the main screen:  (these are what originally sold me to this planner)
  • Daily quote (I loved reading these every day)
  • A to-do list
  • A book list
  • A shopping list (I didn’t do much with this one because I have a shopping list app on my phone and I didn’t want to have to turn my computer on just for my shopping list)
  • Weather widget that shows the current weather in your area
  • Daily Bible verse widget
  • A search widget
  • A message widget
• You have the ability to create and print reports and transcripts
• You can print out daily, weekly, or monthly assignment lists (this was perfect for BearBear as she had trouble remembering to charge her tablet)
• Each child can have his/her own account
• The website will send a daily or weekly email with the assignments listed for that day/week
• You can keep track of the time spent on each subject (I did not worry about this as much because I don’t look at the clock that often as we are working.)
• You have the ability to assign grades and it automatically calculates the average
• I was able to list and categorize my children’s chores

Cons

• Costs $69.95/year paid upfront
• It does not automatically reassign assignments if they are incomplete.  You actually need to manually click to reassign each one to the next day.
• It works from classes/assignments to resources. (I found this harder to navigate than when I can start with my resources and make my schedule around them)
• The website itself works slowly
• There is the ability to take daily notes, but you have to navigate through a few pages to get there
• You are only able to print out reports for the whole year. (I like to print out reports monthly so that I can read through them and put them in my children’s notebooks)
• Reports print separately for each class and notes are separated from assignment lists and grade report. (I didn’t like this because I like all my information concise and in one place)
• No refunds of your money if you decide to go somewhere else during the year

While I like some of the extra features in Homeschool Planet, for me, the cons outweigh the pros.  The time that I spent rescheduling activities and navigating through each page became too much.  I do miss the side widgets a great deal.  This specific feature kept me on Homeschool Planet for as long as I did.

Simply Charlotte Mason

My favorite homeschool planner

I found this homeschool planner when I researched homeschooling methods and fell in love with Charlotte Mason’s approach to education.  I started out using the free basic account, but I eventually signed up for the unlimited access account.  There are a lot of things that I like about this planner, and ultimately, I keep coming back to it.  I have left it at times to see if I could find something that fits better, but overall nothing that I have found compares to its ease of use and features.

Pros

Free Basic Account

• It has an easy to use bookfinder with a multitude of books in it.
• If you cannot find the book that you need, you can create your own resource.
• You can create and print out monthly reports (I do this every month to put in my kids’ notebooks)
• Unlimited editing of your own created resources
• Add notes to each individual lesson (I love this.  This is where I keep my specific notes about what happened in the lesson that day.) 
• Scheduling of up to 20 resources
• Print out a daily work list and a list of the classes for each week
• You can create a list of family assignments as well as assignments for each individual student.
• You can see each student’s work list individually or have all of them on the same screen.
• Easy to use checkboxes next to each assignment.  One click means the assignment was worked on but not finished, two clicks means the assignment was completed.
• When you schedule a resource for a specific day but do not work on it, the work automatically rolls over to the next scheduled day.
• You can easily see what assignments are coming up.
• If you forget to check off whether an assignment was worked on or completed, you have the option to go to a previous date to check it off.
• If you decide to work on an assignment not originally scheduled for that day, you can open up that assignment and mark it.

Paid Subscription

In addition to the above features in the free basic account, the paid subscription has these features:

• You can schedule an unlimited amount of resources (I usually keep my resources tight, just because I don’t like having a lot of resources hanging around that I don’t use/need)
• In addition to printing out monthly reports, you can print out daily, weekly, and yearly reports
• Resources can be shared with other Simply Charlotte Mason members if you choose
• You can create a progress report, attendance report, and a bibliography report
• You can choose to print out reports with all the assignments worked on or finished, or you can just print a summary of the work finished
• This planner works for any method of homeschooling
• Your account can be cancelled at any time

Cons

• Pay $7.95 monthly (That comes to a yearly total of $95.40.  Kind of a hefty fee, but I think the features make it worth it.)
• It does not keep track of grades  (In my state, grades are not required.  I firmly believe that grades give a very limited picture of the ability of each child.  That is why I love the note taking feature.  I can get a better evaluation of the abilities of my children that way.)
• In the free basic account, you are unable to share your resources with other CM members
• Also in the free basic account, you cannot access the bibliography or attendance reports.

Overall, Simply Charlotte Mason has won my vote as the best online homeschool planner.  It does cost a little bit of money, but I believe that the wonderful features outweigh the cost.  I do miss some of the ability to personalize my account like I was able to with Homeschool Planet, but for ease of use and simple, clear planning, Simply Charlotte Mason is the best online homeschool planner that I have found.

What homeschool planner do you use or have you found that meets your needs the best?  Please comment below and let me know what homeschool planner works for you!