Review: Debra Bell Ultimate Planners

Debra Bell, author of the Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling, has created a line of Ultimate Homeschool Planners to make organizing your homeschool easier.  Debra put a lot of time and thought into each of the planners to create something that is versatile and easy to use.  The planners are not only useful, but they are also eye-catching which makes them fun to use.  Because they are not pre-dated, they are flexible for most any homeschool schedule. The planners include the:

• Ultimate Homeschool Planner for mom and/or dad, $28 – two covers currently available
• Ultimate Weekly Planner for Teens, $19
• Ultimate Daily Planner for Students, $19

We received The Ultimate Homeschool Planner and The Ultimate Weekly Planner for Teens to review.

I was blessed to be able to listen to Debra Bell talk about the vision behind the planners. Her goal was to create a planner that would allow homeschool moms to organize all of their homeschool needs including the spiritual needs of the family. It’s, in a way, a guidebook to help homeschool parents be better organized in their schooling, their life. It helps families set priorities academically and spiritually.  The resource list, reading list, field trip/activity list… help keep track of the variety of things that take place in the life of a homeschooler. Debra also wanted to make it a good size for portability which means that she carefully planned what would be included in the planner as well as the layout of the planner. The spiral binding makes it easy to use as you can fold the planner so it lays flat.

The Ultimate Homeschool Planner begins with a section explaining how to use the planner which is quite useful as there are a lot of features contained within the pages. It has a good number of planning pages including yearly, monthly, and weekly schedules and goals. It has a place for you to write down goals both academic and spiritual. The planner is set up to be used in conjunction with the student planner and/or the teen planner. You do not need to use those planners, but these planners flow together seamlessly. The “how to” section at the beginning of the Ultimate Homeschool Planner explains how to use the planners together as a tool to help students become more independent learners.

The teen planner is set up to create independent learners. At the beginning of the week, teens can meet with their parent(s) to go over the schedule for the week. In their own planner, they can record their assignments and create a schedule for completing those assignments. If teens aren’t familiar with setting up a schedule, parents may need to help the students at first. In time, the teen will be able to set up their own schedule, and the parent(s) can oversee the process.

The planner starts with a place for them to record their plans/goals for the year. It then goes into the schedule for their first and second semesters. It has both monthly and weekly calendar pages. The weekly pages include a place to record time spent on each subject each day. Each week has an SAT word to work on, a place for notes, a record for appointments/work schedule, and a section to keep track of daily devotions. The next section is a spot to keep track of grades, a reading log, an activity log, a Presidental Active Lifestyle Award activity log,  credit tracker, and high school record keeper.  It concludes with a reference section that contains review tools and materials as well as college prep materials and checklists. To keep things fun, a couple of sheets of stickers are included for use with the calendar.

Munchkin thought the teen planner was really cool, but she’s more of a digital planner type of girl. She’s hoping they come out with a digital version of this product as she’d be more likely to use it. If your teen likes paper planners, this is THE planner to have.

What did I think of the Ultimate Homeschool Planner? I think it’s probably the best homeschool planner on the market. It contains pretty much all of the pages that I include in a planner that I create for myself when I’m unable to find the “perfect” homeschool planner. I love that Debra Bell has a real heart for homeschoolers, and she wants to create the best resources possible to help homeschoolers in their homeschool journey.