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I was so excited that I was asked to review some of the wonderful products made by “The Old Schoolhouse” magazine. The first part of this post will be my review of “The Schoolhouse Planner.” My review of the digital version of the magazine will follow below.
When I first read the description of this planner, I’ll admit that I wasn’t impressed and didn’t feel I would need it. I tend to like doing things the hard way and thought to myself that I could assemble a similar group of forms and reference materials and not spend the money. I’m very happy to say that I was proven wrong, this planner is just amazing! The work that must have gone into assembling and designing all of the 247 pages of it is awe-inspiring.
The planner is a PDF download, and each page can be typed on and saved and printed as you need it. The planner is broken up into two major parts, one being monthly themes and the other being blank forms.
The monthly themes include very nice printable calendars for each month of the coming school year 2008-2009. The calendars are nice and large with lots of room to write in the squares. Each month gives you the calendar, a theme with very useful reference printouts such as timelines and other lists, an informative article on the theme, a resource list for The Schoolhouse Store, and several yummy recipes.
The blank forms are separated into two sections, one for homeschool related forms and one for the household. The homeschool forms include ones for planning and for evaluation, ones for keeping track of curriculum used, logs for field trips and memorization, etc., for assembling unit studies, for support groups and co-ops, and for extra classes and clubs for both children and parents among many others.
The household forms include sheets for phone and contact info for a variety of areas, homemaking schedules and reminders, groceries, menu planning and food inventories, daily and family chore charts and logs, budget and financial inventory, gift lists, prayer journal and bible reading schedule/log, dates to remember, garden planning, household inventory of major appliances and electronics, loaned and borrowed list, vacation plans, pets health, an address book and directions. And, believe it or not, there is even more than what is listed here!
Every page is designed to coordinate with all the other pages in this planner. The fonts and colors used are easy and pleasing to the eye.
There are so many pages included in this planner that is exactly what we were needing for this upcoming school year, and getting it all in one place has saved me tons of time that I can now use more efficiently instead of trying to track down or design similar forms myself. After downloading it and seeing it was 247 pages long, I thought that instead of just printing it all, I’d just go through it and print a few pages as they appealed to me. That concept didn’t last long as I soon wanted to print out nearly every page.
We are going to have a great year in our homeschooling this year, and I can give a lot of thanks for that to “The Schoolhouse Planner.” I will be recommending it highly to all my friends and support group peers.
The other product I was lucky enough to review is the digital version of “The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.” I’m currently a subscriber of the hard copy and always make sure I have a pad of notepaper and a pen whenever I sit down to read it. By the time I read through the paper version, I have a long list of websites I want to go to and curriculum ideas I want to explore. I was curious to see how I would read through the digital copy.
Since I’ve never looked at a digital version of a magazine before, I was pleased that the first thing to appear was a list of navigation tools.
When I clicked on the “Contents” tab at the top of the screen, I was able to choose exactly where I wanted to go with just the touch of a button. I could also just go page by page if I wanted, like in the paper version. When I clicked on the “Pages” icon, it took me to a screen that shows thumbnails of each two page spread, and then I could click on whichever one I wanted to go to.
There is also a search option. You can also click on “Links” and it will show you all the websites that are referenced on that page and if you click on one of the links it will open a new page and take you to the site. You can change the way you view the magazine on your computer by clicking on the “Settings” icon.
There are also icons you can select to bookmark a particular page for easy reference. You can also print a page, view full screen, get help, and do the RSS feed.
I will admit that I am highly impressed, way more so than I thought I would be, with this digital version of “The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.” When my current subscription runs out, I will renew with the digital version. It is much easier to just click on a link while I’m reading an article or looking at an advertisement than it is to stop in the middle of reading to write it out longhand on a sheet of paper then type it in later to go check it out. Half the time I end up misplacing all the little website addresses I jot down, but now I don’t have to worry about that! This will certainly help with my mountains of paper clutter. The digital version is a great product, and it’s another one that I highly recommend. All the free goodies that you get with your order are worth as much as the cost of the subscription, actually they are worth even more.
If you’d like to check out these products for yourself, you can find the planner here, and the digital magazine here. If you’d like to see all the other wonderful products you can get from The Old Schoolhouse Store, click here. | 
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Wednesday, August 13, 2008 - Untitled Comment
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Blessings to you!
Miss Jocelyn