TOS Schoolhouse Planner

I am a veteran homeschooler.  I have been in the trenches since 1999.  And yesterday was the first time I had ever seen the TOS Schoolhouse Planner.
TOS 2010 Schoolhouse Planner

614 pages?  You're kidding, right?  I was immediately overwhelmed.  So I printed out the 13 page Table of Contents that I could curl up on the couch with and peruse.


Wow.  My first impression was this massive tome was misnamed.  At first I thought it needed to be called "If You Homeschool You Need This Planner"

There are 293 pages of nothing but ways to make lists!  I am a list maker from way back, but this makes me look like an amateur.  I have lots of things rattling around in my brain that I have thought about putting on a list, and this planner gives me no excuse to not put them on paper.  Not only are there your normal calendars (that you can type on!), but there are lists for car maintenance, freezer contents, convention visits, co-op planning, babysitter sheets, a garden grid, appliance lists, loaned and borrowed lists, website passwords, and on and on and on (all ready to be typed in).

Okay, we still need a new name.  How about, "If You Are Alive, You Need This Planner" or "Lists to Satisfy the List Maker in You Planner"

However, this tends to ignore the first 202 pages of this list library.  Here you find 12 months of encouragement and gentle nudging.  Each month has a theme (geography, special needs, food, history and more).  There is an article written about the theme of the month, activities, recipes, links to items at the TOS store and web page links to delve deeper into that month's theme.  If you try to sit down and read this all at once, it is like trying to teach all four years of high school in one.  This section is absolutely meant to be looked at month by month, giving you a theme and encouragement to help make that month more interesting in your school and to maybe give you things to think about that you would not have come up with on your own.

If I had seen this thing 11 years ago, I could have saved some of my precious brain power for things other than finding organizers to organize my homeschool. This massive library has items I didn't even know I needed.

59 page sneak peek, including Table of Contents

TOS, you really need to rename this planner.  If my earlier suggestions don't work for you, how about "If You Are Alive and Have Children, You Need This Planner"

(I am a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew.  The Planner was given to me so that I could write this advertisement for the Planner, which is a contest entry.)