The Old Schoolhouse Student Planner ~ Primary Planner

I was asked to review the Primary Student Planner from The Old Schoolhouse Store recently. I wasn't sure just how useful a planner would be for a 7 and 6 year old, but different age ranges were exactly what they were looking for. We have been using parts of the planner now for about a week. Not everything in the planner was a good fit for my kids' ages, but everything in it is something we can use someday. Probably a lot sooner than I think!

The planner has two parts, the primary planner itself (with 203 pages!) and a parent pack. The parent pack has some really great articles on getting your child get organized and helping them mange their time wisely. I am starting to use some of these ideas in our home, and I hope to see some good results soon!

Now let's talk about  the student planner. WOW I was surprised to see lots of ways we could use this planner for the kids. The first page that got their attention was a page with a pizza on it. It is supposed to be a way to help students manage their time and get everything done in a day. Well, my 7 year old son saw something completely different when he saw that page! He said we should divide the pizza into 10 slices and each time he reads a book we can write it on a slice, and when he has read 10 books he gets a pizza. We are doing the Book-It program this year through Pizza Hut, and their goal each month is 10 books read out loud. That was pretty smart thinking on his part! So that is how we will be using that pizza page :0)



I printed them each out a monthly calender, mainly for keeping track of what day it is and counting down to special events or holidays coming up. They can write anything on there they want to, or check off the days if they like. I haven't had to answer the question "How many days till.....?" since I gave them those, they go and count down the days themselves. I should have given them calenders a long time ago!

There are pages for simple sign language, the alphabet and numbers. The kids said they would like to learn it, especially since they have already been introduced to sign language before by a relative. I challenged them to learn how to sign their own name first and then build from there. They can do this activity on their own, and they like that!

This year we are using a program called Adventures in My Father's World, which includes US history, and a state by state mini study. The planner had pages for the Thirteen Colonies by date and the States and Capitols. They are listed in the order that they became states, just the way we are learning about them. So those pages came in very handy.

Besides using the pizza page idea above, I also printed out the "Books Read This Year" pages to keep track of the books they read. I think they will be surprised at the end of the year by all the books they have read, don't you? They should have around 100 books read by then. That is going to look nice on their portfolios for the year. All of this organization is going to make the job of putting that together much easier too!

Of course there is a chore chart in here too. Did I mention that this planner is customizable? Yes! You can type in anything on the blank lines before you print it if you are not the writing type of person. The chore chart is customizable too. It would be NICE if my kids just did these things every day, but I am not expecting any drastic overnight changes here. We will work on a couple of things at a time and build up from there.

The last things we printed were a Family Tree page, a page for listing our Family Rules, and a page with Important Phone Numbers & Contacts.

There are a LOT of other great pages in the planner that we did not print yet. You can read about them here, it is really packed with great information and more organizing power than I know what to do with haha!

The cost of the Primary Planner is just $9.95! That's a pretty good deal in my opinion :0) There are also planners for Middle School and High School available too. If you need more than one there are bundle sets available too. Visit The Old Schoolhouse Store to read more about them and order. You can have your planner downloaded and ready to print in minutes.



Disclaimer ~ I received this product as part of the Homeschool Crew in exchange for an honest review after using it in our homeschool. My opinions are my own and were not influenced by The Old Schoolhouse Store.