Friday, June 19, 2009

2009 TOS Planner

There is one thing that I have often said to the homeschoolers in our area,  and that is, "Nothing beats homeschoolers helping homeschoolers!"And that is the truth.  If you are anything like me you have purchased, or been given "teacher planners", while they can be tweaked to work for what we need. We really do not need the 30 desk seating charts. And forms with 30 slots for children. When there was nothing better available, these would meet the need.



Enter in The Old Schoolhouse 2009 Planner. The people at TOS had put out an awesome planner last year, and let me tell you they have out down themselves this year!.  What is really awesome, the listened to all the feedback that was given to them last year and have created 40 more forms to help you in your home and your homeschool. Last year's planner was 247 pages and I thought that was big, however, this year's planner comes wieghing in at a whopping 374 pages!!!


So what exactly is the TOS 2009 Planner. It really is everything that you need to run your home and your homeschool at your fingertips. Best of all, it is a download. There is no waiting for the postman, you can get started right away!


Let's get down to the brass tacks of it all. Last year, what I did, is I only printed out the forms that I thought I needed. And to be perfectly honest, there were probably many more I could have used that I forgot about.


So this year, right after I downloaded the planner, I printed out the entire planner.  Now, I know what your thinking, that is alot of ink and alot of paper. Yes, it is, however, I printed in black and white, and my printer prints double sided. Anyhow, this works much better for me, I can already tell you. I am a hands on kind of girl, so I want to "see" and "hold" what is available. I can tell you that I will be using many more pages than I did last year.


When I need to duplicate the page, I can just pull it out of the the three ring binder and make the copy.


For some of you, the thought if printing out the entire planner might be overwhelming. So I do have an idea on how to take care of that as well, so you will not forget what you have available. Print out the table of contents, along with what ever forms you think you will use. That way when you are looking for a specific kind of form, you can look it up in the table of contents, prior to searching on the computer, or flash drive or disc you have saved the planner onto. The other thing I would do, is print out all of the resource lists, and articles. For instance, there is a reference sheet on the Branches of Federal, State and Local Governments, and one on the presidents, and the periodic table of elements, just to name a few. If you have those all printed out and in the back of your planner, you can reference those in an intant, without having to search for them. And if you are anything like me you need all the time saving tips you can get!


You will also want to print out the 24 recipes included, which all come from homeschool mom's!  There are even handwriting alphabet sheets in the back, so if you have a child who needs work, you will have those at your fingertips as well!


In addition to all the wonderful homeschool forms that are available in the planner, they have froms to help you better manage you home. They have forms such as Emergency Medical Information, Homekeeping Weekly Schedule, Menu planning, food inventory log, prayer journal, daily bible reading, garden plans, car maintenance and an address book plus many many more!


So with all of that, what are my favorites... I will have to tell you there is so much to like, but my two main favorites are the "year" calendars from 2009-2012! That comes in handy when making long term plans! And they have homeschool forms with 5 children on it! WooHoo! That's how many I have! I never can find forms with 5! They also have forms for 2, 3 and 4 children as well!  I love having the information on the resource lists handy. You could say that you could access that info somewhere else, that is true, however, it is much easier to have all in one place.. and with someone else doing the leg work!


And they also have some great forms for homeschool groups in there. And those are gong to come in handy for me as well!


One thing I was just mentioning when talking about homeschooling on a budget.. one way to save money, is not purchasing "boxed" curriculum where they lay out all the plans for you, and in turn do the planning  yourself. However, the one thing you do, is sacrifice time. However, with the TOS 2009 Planner, you could have both. You can save money and have awesome planning tools at your fingertips, that will make the job much less daunting!


Please visit the TOS STORE and check out the planner. Right now the cost is $39.00. Also, if you order by July 12th you will recieve the 2008 planner excerpts for free! That is a deal!


Happy Planning!!!!

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