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How I Organize Our Homeschool Year with Homeschool Planet || Homeschooling Multiple Kids
Jun 19, 2024
Who else loves homeschool planning? In this video, I'm setting up our entire 2024-2025 homeschool year in Homeschool Planet (in less than 30 minutes 😮). Come see how easy this is and learn how to select your homeschool dates, set up classes, and even add lesson plans for an entire year with a click of a button.
00:00 Intro
01:48 Setting up our homeschool schedule
07:18 Subjects & categories
10:40 Adding classes
16:58 Marketplace lesson plans (soo easy!!)
23:26 Additional classes
28:48 How I use Homeschool Planet
30:20 Giveaway deets
✨ENTER THE GIVEAWAY✨
➡️ https://blessedhomeschool.com/monthly-giveaway/
MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO:
⭐ FREE Trial of Homeschool Planet — https://blessedhomeschool.com/homeschoolplanet
⭐ Homeschool Planet Review — https://blessedhomeschool.com/homeschool-planet-review/
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0:00
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. We are just wrapping up our homeschool year, but I've already been thinking a lot about our upcoming school year
0:07
So I'm setting everything up in my online homeschool planner today. In this video, I'll be showing you how easy and quick it is to set up my entire homeschool year with homeschool planet, how it really helps me organize my homeschool schedule, especially with four kids to manage and track work for. And stick around until the end for an amazing giveaway you won't want to miss
0:30
All right, so for those of you who don't know me, my name is Sarah, and I'm a homeschooling
0:36
mom to four kids ages 12, 10, 10, and 5. And it feels kind of early to be planning out our homeschool year
0:43
It is early. I don't want you guys to feel like you're behind or anything like that if you're not doing
0:49
this yet. The reason I'm doing it so early is so that those of you who are thinking about using
0:53
homeschool plan at next year can get an idea of how easy it is and what you'll need to do
0:59
to set up your school year or if you're simply curious about how I plan, you can see how I do it
1:04
So we've been using homeschool planet for about a year and a half now. I love it. It's been a
1:09
tremendous help in keeping me organized and keeping everything running smoothly with homeschooling
1:14
multiple older kids and managing multiple curriculums and activities. If you've been watching my channel
1:20
for a while, you already know this because I talk about it so much. And today is not going to be a
1:25
full review or tutorial. It's just going to be me setting up my new
1:29
homeschool year, planning out the dates, setting up my classes, things like that. So you can get a
1:34
general idea of how it works. Near the end of the video, I'll kind of pull it all together and
1:39
talk about our daily routine, how it works with this, and why I think this is such a great
1:44
planner to use if you are homeschooling multiple kids. Okay, let's get started. All right, so this is
1:49
my dashboard view when I'm logged into homeschool planet. Like I said, we've been using this
1:53
for a while now. So I have things already set up. If you end up trying a free
1:59
trial or you purchase this, there is a little bit of a learning curve, but I promise, give
2:05
yourself a little time. Once you have everything set up, it will be running smoothly and you
2:11
will be using it like a pro. Okay, so the first thing that I'm going to do in setting up my school
2:16
year is going to settings and then school year and vacation because I need to set the dates
2:21
of our homeschool year. So I'm going to go here and I'm going to click add another school year
2:26
and it pops up this little calendar and it already has the school year dates the school year
2:32
2024 2025 in here and I'm going to be able to select my first day and my last day. So I'm actually
2:39
going to keep the school year dates the same. We'll start on July 1st and then we'll end on June 30th
2:45
And the reason for that is because in Missouri we can start recording homeschool hours beginning
2:50
July 1st. So anything that we do that's educational, I'm going to be tracking it
2:56
keeping track of our hours. So there are going to be some things that I want to start
2:59
recording as far as hours go. And I kind of changed my mind on some things. I didn't think
3:06
we were going to start everything until August, but we are going to start a couple of things
3:12
from our curriculum in July. So you'll see I'm going to get that all plugged into the calendar
3:17
Okay, I'm going to keep the reporting periods the same. Class days, Monday through Friday
3:22
we don't typically do homeschool on Saturday and Sunday, but there may be some activities
3:27
and stuff that I can log on those days. You just want to mark the days you typically will have
3:33
your classes. And then this is going to give you your total school days. And you're going to see
3:37
that change as I go through the calendar and kind of select different things. Typically
3:44
curriculum is often written for 180 days or so. So that's typically I at least want to have that
3:51
many in there when I'm planning this and this makes it really easy to see. Okay, so from
3:56
your holidays, I'm going to select holidays in the United States and this will just mark
4:03
and show me on my calendar some of the different holidays in case we want to take off on those days
4:09
It just makes it really easy and there's lots of other holidays that you can select that'll
4:14
pre-populate on your calendar as you're planning. But then from here, what I will do is just go in
4:20
and I can either select a date that's checked to take it off of our school day
4:26
or I can check any of those dates to make them our school day
4:31
So right now, let's see. We have our start date in July
4:35
In August, my kids have their birthday on August 22nd, so I already know I'm going to take those two days off
4:44
So I'm going to deselect those, and you can see our total school days change right here
4:50
In September, there's nothing that I'm necessarily planning on taking the day off for
4:56
So we'll go over to October. We are traveling in October. I have a marathon later in the month
5:05
So I know that I need to take these days off and even November 1st because we are going to be traveling
5:12
So I will take those off the calendar right away. Let's see
5:17
This is Veterans Day. I'm going to make that a school day though. We typically don't take off for some of the
5:24
typical holidays. Some of them we do, but we'll put that one back on the calendar. We are going to
5:31
let's see, Thanksgiving is the 28th this year. So we usually take that entire week of Thanksgiving
5:37
off. And then over in December, my birthday and my little guy's birthday are on the 5th and 6th
5:45
So we're going to take those off. And then we also usually take the last couple of weeks off of school at the end of the year
5:54
And then when we go over to January, I'm going to take that first week off as well
5:58
And then we'll come back on the sixth. The only other thing that I really think I'm going to do is in March
6:05
Right now, I kind of just planned this week. We do like to take a week off for like a spring break type thing
6:11
but I think that's going to be it. And then you can see all these dates are still selected through June
6:19
Now, will we most likely go all the way through June? Probably not
6:24
We typically like to finish up through May. But I will leave these open just in case there's some hours we still need to complete
6:32
because we have until the end of June. And I have plenty more than 180 on the calendar
6:39
And I kind of like to leave that little buffer. again, because I know there are some going to be some days in here where we are either going to do a field trip or we take an impromptu vacation or we're sick or things are going to come up and we're going to have to rearrange the schedule
6:54
So having more days on there, I just like that. It kind of gives me that buffer
6:59
You know, we've got extra days beyond what is going to be in our curriculum that we can kind of play with
7:05
And it just makes it really easy for us. So once that is all set up, that is really all that I need to do on that page
7:14
And I'm going to click save just because I want to make sure I save this. Okay, so that was really easy, right
7:20
Once I have that done, then I'm going to go to subjects and categories just to see if there's
7:26
anything that I want to change. This is what I all had set up last year
7:30
So all of the different subjects that we could have classes in. And then categories are for different things that maybe it's not a class
7:39
but we do an activity and I want to market as a certain category. I love how you can
7:43
choose if it a core or a non activity or subject because I do have to track those for our state requirements So that is really helpful And like I said this year I am going to try to track our homeschool hours
7:56
with homeschool planet. I have not done that in the past, but I don't think I've really given it
8:01
a fair shot. So I want to make sure I have all of my subjects and categories covered. And I think
8:07
this year we are doing, I had language arts just all kind of lumped together before because our language
8:13
arts curriculum was integrated. Everything was all together. But this year, we're going to be doing
8:19
essentials in writing. So I think I want to add writing as a separate subject. And I will, I don't
8:27
know what color I want to make this. Let's just make it blue for now. And I'm also going to add
8:33
literature because we're doing essentials in literature. And then my girls have their own
8:43
literature curriculum as well. So when I set up those classes, I'm just going to put them under those
8:49
subjects. And then I think I'm going to add, and still kind of playing around with how I want to
8:54
record everything from my father's world because it's mainly history, but there are some other
9:02
components to it. And I don't know, it's going to be tricky, I think, to track that with
9:09
hours, but I'll figure it out somehow. I'm going to do my father's world kindergarten. That is for
9:16
my little guy who's doing kindergarten this year. I don't have to track hours for him, but I like to
9:22
put a schedule in homeschool planet for me to see. So I know what I'm doing each day with him
9:29
And finally, I'll add my father's world. We have creation to the Greeks. I'm going to be doing that
9:38
with my bigger kids and we'll use dark blue for that. Now I am going to, I think what I'm going to do
9:45
and I may change this, it's mainly going to be history and core stuff. So I can log those hours
9:52
mainly as history. This, I'll say that it's going to be core, even though I'm not going to
9:57
track hours for that. Literature is going to be core and writing is core. Okay, so I think that's all
10:03
that I need for subject. And then categories, again, these are extra things
10:08
things that are not part of the main curriculum, like we do a quilting class or, you know
10:14
my kids play sports, or we watch World Watch News. So those are things that I'm going to want to
10:19
log, but they're not part of a class, but I can count homeschool hours for them. So that's why I would
10:24
use categories for that. Or if there was something that you wanted to put on the calendar for your
10:29
kids to do every day, you wanted them to check off music practice, which I do, then you can mark it
10:34
as a category, or you could call it a class. That's totally up to you. So I'm going to
10:38
going to save this. Okay, now what you guys are going to see me do is actually add in all of my
10:44
classes. So I'm going to set up all the classes that my kids are going to take next year so you can
10:48
see what we're doing, how I'm going to log those, the settings for those, et cetera. So I can really
10:54
click anywhere in this blank spot to set up a new class. When I click there, it pops up my options
11:00
I can add a class. I can add an event or anything, you know, chores, sports. It's not part of a class
11:08
So the first thing we'll do is I'll select class and I'm going to set up our CTC math
11:17
So subject is math. We'll call this CTC math. And this is going to be for all of my older kids
11:25
So I love that I can select multiple kids here and assign the same class to them
11:29
I don't have to do this three different times. So one class, all the kids
11:35
then I come down here I select when we're going to do it they're going to have math every weekday
11:41
starting date we're going to start on our first day of the new school year and I'm not going to
11:50
schedule these for a particular time but I will put an end date in here oh let's see until
11:57
June 30th 2025 so start and end dates for this particular class okay and what I'm going to do now I'm
12:05
not actually going to plan anything out. I'm just setting up the class. And with math
12:09
I go in every day I grade their work, but then at the end of the week is when I'll plan
12:14
out what I want them to do for the next week. So I kind of do that as we go. And I will go in
12:20
and I'll do that for each individual kid. They have their own assignment list right here
12:26
So let's see. I don't want any notes. I'm not going to be doing grading for this just yet
12:32
And then tracking hours. Like I said, I am going to be. going to try to track hours this year. Using homeschool planet, we will see how it goes. So I do want
12:41
to track hours for math. We will use the class method. Typically I'll go in and I will enter time
12:48
every day, but I think 30 minutes is a good, you know, if I don't enter anything, it will kind of
12:53
use that for the time spent on math. And this kind of just shows you can go in here and edit it
13:00
But, okay, so tracking hours is set up. Let's see what's under options
13:05
Show this class only on those days for which there is assignment. I'm just going to keep it unchecked for now
13:11
Okay, so we'll click save and add another. All right, so math is set up
13:19
Next, I'm going to set up science. And this is going to be for my oldest son
13:27
He's going to be using science. Shepherd, physical science. He's actually using it right now, but he's going to be continuing it
13:37
in the next year. So I'm going to take my girls off there. It's just going to be for Luke
13:43
And this end date is actually going to be a little bit earlier because he, like I said, he's
13:49
already started to use it. So he is going to finish this up around September 6th. And then
13:56
we're going to be starting something new for him for science. So I know I only need this
14:00
one to go through 9-6, and he's only doing it three days a week. So I'm going to go here
14:08
selected days of the week, and I'm going to select Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Those are
14:13
the days that he's going to have this class. I do want to track hours for this one as well. So
14:20
this is going to be pretty standard. Class method, 30 minutes. That one should be good. And I think
14:27
this all looks good here. And so we'll do save and add another. All right, this one is going to be
14:33
Latin. I'm kind of planning this out for this summer. Since we're starting this in July
14:42
we're going to be kind of finishing up a Latin review book. So that's what I'm going to call this one
14:49
All of my kids are doing this, all my older kids. And then this, we are going to end this on
14:56
August 2nd. So I kind of know our end date for some of these because we're only doing this
15:03
review over the summer and then we're going to be starting second form Latin. And I only
15:09
really want them to do this two days a week. We're only doing this two days a week. So I'm
15:14
going to select Monday and Wednesday and we're going to save and I'm going to add one more
15:21
They are doing music practice. We're still doing our music lessons over the summer
15:26
So I'm just going to enter this in so they have a little checklist and remember to get it done
15:32
And we just call this music practice We going to do this one daily and then starting July and this one is going to go through the end of the year because they practice that every day And I didn check
15:46
this on the last one, but the hours should be the same. Everything is toggled on. So if you don't want
15:54
to track hours, you would have to take that off. But by default, it is on, which is good because
15:59
I'm going to need that. So, okay, I'm going to save and close
16:03
close. Everything looks good for that. And if I move over with my calendar and shift the date
16:10
let's go all the way to July. So here is what you guys can see. I just set up. Now, there's
16:20
no checklist here because I haven't added any assignments or anything, but everything is on the
16:26
planner and ready to go. So if I'm ready to add in, let's say we're getting to, you know
16:32
the last week of June and I want to add in some math work for my kids. I just click on the box
16:37
and click edit and then I can go in and I can add any assignment that I want to for any of the
16:42
kids. And you can see this little clock symbol by each one. This tells me that I'm tracking
16:47
hours for that particular class and it's really easy. If I just want to click on that, I can very
16:53
easily change the time spent on that class for my kids. Okay, so those are all of the classes that we're
17:01
going to start in July. And actually, like I said, we're continuing math and Latin and science and
17:08
music. All those, we're kind of continuing over the summer, but that's just setting them up for the new
17:12
school year. So the next thing that I'm going to set up, I have three classes that we're going to
17:18
kind of start in the middle of July, and that's essentials in writing, essentials in literature
17:23
and our BJU Press, sixth grade literature. And I wasn't going to start those until later in the year
17:30
but the reason I'm doing it early is because they are brand new courses to us
17:36
They are online and there's going to be a little bit of a learning curve, I think
17:40
So if we can get a head start on those and just work on those for a few weeks before we add everything else in
17:47
I think that's going to be the best plan for us. And I actually purchased lesson plans from the homeschool planet marketplace for these
17:55
So I'm going to see if I can find them and set up this class
18:00
So if I go here, create a class from a lesson plan
18:05
Okay, so these are the lesson plans that I have. And I haven't done this in a while, so we're gonna kind of see how easy this is together
18:13
Let's start off with essentials in writing, level six. This is for my girls
18:22
So if I select that and click next, this says, would you like to create a new class or apply
18:29
Okay, so I need to create a new class. create a new class because I haven't done that yet. So I will click next. I want to include all
18:36
assignments. This is going to be writing and I'm going to be assigning this to Carly and Emma
18:45
They're going to be my sixth graders. Okay, so far so good. So the schedule for this class
18:53
Okay, so I want them to start this on, we're going to start July 8th and it's going to go
19:00
through June 30th of 2025 and we're going to do it five days a week no particular time okay so far so good
19:13
okay it has suggested grading sure yeah I'm curious to see what the grading is like so sure let's set
19:20
up the grading for this class all right loading okay so it'll be added to the calendar and then I can
19:28
select the class to edit it. Okay, look at that. All right, so starting July 8th, this new class has been
19:37
added to my calendar and shows me all the lesson plans. So there's the checkboxes that you guys can
19:44
see there. And if I click into it and edit it, you'll see all the different fields kind of already
19:50
filled in. Okay, so I do want to make sure that I'm tracking hours. We're going to do class method
19:56
and grades. So if you click into grades, we haven't done a lot with grades yet. So I know right now it's
20:06
showing homework and test. So if I want to make changes, it looks like there probably aren't any
20:11
projects or quizzes. This might be it. But I can go in and I can change the percentage that's allotted
20:17
to each of those. I'll maybe come in here and play around with this later. I, keeping grades for my
20:22
sixth graders is not a huge deal to me, but I'm just kind of curious to get a feel
20:26
for what this is like in homeschool planet. So when I do need to start using it, I understand
20:31
it a little bit better. So, okay, so I think that all looks good. They've even got a description
20:37
in there. These are shared assignments, but each of them, it's all filled in on their own as well
20:44
All right, so I think that's it. I'm going to save and close. So that was easy. I'm going to do the
20:49
same thing for my son's essentials in writing. So that's level seven. So I'll click on that. We're
20:56
going to create a new class, all assignments. This is going to be writing just for Luke. We will
21:04
start this same thing. This is going to start on July 8th through June 30th, five days a week. We'll set up
21:13
grading for this. All right, and there we go. So just like that, you guys, all his entire year is
21:21
planned out for writing. So for that one, those classes, I don't have to go in and add. And
21:26
any lesson plans or anything. It's all there. The lesson plans that you can purchase from their
21:31
marketplace vary. It was either $5 or $7, something like that for lesson plans for this curriculum
21:38
So for me, you know, to save that time and just make things a little bit easier for me
21:44
especially, you know, with this new curriculum we're going to be trying, totally worth it
21:49
And there was one more that I bought. Oh, actually two more. Okay, so I have essentials in literature
21:54
my son is going to be trying that this year so I'm going to set this up with a couple of clicks
22:00
this is going to be literature that's Luke my seventh grader same deal July 8th June 30th
22:08
okay and I did remember I need to go in here and I need to make sure I am tracking hours
22:17
so I'm going to set that up I could tell because there wasn't a clock there so I'm going to
22:23
track hours for these. Okay, and that's it. I thought I had gotten one more lesson plan
22:31
but I'm just realizing that I did not. Those are the only ones that I had purchased right now
22:37
I am going to add one more class to start on July 8th, but I'm going to be entering the lesson plans for that
22:43
And that is my literature class for my sixth grade girls. So we're going to do BJU Press literature
22:53
six. And actually, you know what? This is called perspectives in literature. So that's what we're
23:03
going to call it. This one is for Carly and Emma. And they're going to be doing this daily
23:10
We'll start this July 8th until the end of the year. And okay, I'll be entering those assignments
23:16
as we go So all right So far so good You guys I hope you could see how easy that was to apply those lesson plans and plan out your year I love that Okay so the rest of the classes we going to be doing we will not be starting until August 5th So if I click over to there
23:35
that way I won't have to enter the date every time. But let's go ahead and set up the last
23:39
couple of classes right now. So I need to do a science class for my girls. They're going to be
23:46
doing science in the beginning from Berean building. So that'll be Carly and Emma and Oliver will be doing it too, but I don't need to really track him yet on here
24:00
So I'm just going to leave that alone. They are going to be doing this two times a week
24:05
So we're going to do Monday and Wednesday and starting August 5th and it's going to go to the end of the year
24:12
Tracking hours. Everything is already set up. So there we go. That one is added up at the top of there
24:19
and what I can do is I can easily rearrange or move things around
24:25
If I want to, I can switch days, rearrange our schedule that way
24:30
Sometimes I like to put all my kids stuff that they're going to be doing independently up at the top
24:34
So they work through that first. But I'll kind of play around with that maybe a little bit later
24:39
Okay, the next thing we're going to add, I made that my father's world kindergarten class for my son
24:47
and this is really just for me to track this, to keep track of what lessons we're doing
24:55
and to remind me each day what we need to do. So this is going to be for Oliver and it's going
25:02
to be daily. Got our starting date there. And actually for his, I don't need to track hours yet. So I'm
25:10
not even going to bother with having that little clock up there because I don't need it to confuse me
25:15
every day. All right. And then next up, we're going to add all about spelling. So this will be
25:22
under spelling, all about spelling level three. This is going to be for Carly and Emma. I decided we're
25:33
actually only going to do this one day a week. We're going to take this really slow. And our
25:40
schedule can get so busy. I know if I try to cram it in more than one day
25:45
We're just going to go insane. So we're going to do it one day a week
25:49
I think there's like 30 to 35 lessons or something in here. So we're just going to stretch it out over the year
25:55
I'm not in a big rush. We're obviously going to be working on spelling throughout the year in various ways
26:02
So I think this is going to be good at just doing this one day a week
26:07
Okay, next we're going to add an art class for my daughter
26:11
She's going to be doing living art lessons from. Masterbooks and just Emma is going to be doing this one and she'll do this two days a week on I think
26:24
we're going to do Tuesdays and Fridays okay we also have basics of a biblical worldview so I put
26:32
that under religious studies this is going to be for all of my older kids we will be doing this
26:40
one two times a week as well so probably on Wednesdays and Fridays I'm going to
26:45
this one up. Okay, we're going to track hours. That all looks good. All right, guys, I just have two more
26:50
things that I need to add in. So we're going to do my father's world creation to the Greeks. I'm going
26:56
to select that as the subject. Again, I'm still trying to work through how I'm going to log hours
27:03
and how I'm going to plan this out. I think I have a good idea of how I'm going to do it, but once I get
27:08
going, it may change. We're going to have to see how it goes. But this one is going to be every week
27:15
going to be tracking hours on this. We're going to close that
27:19
All right, that's on the calendar. And then the final thing is our second form Latin
27:25
So we'll do Latin, all of my older kids. And this is going to be every weekday
27:32
We do this class as part of co-op. So one of the days is going to be a co-op day
27:36
but then they have a short assignment every day to kind of work on at home
27:41
So the dates look good. Not sure when our co-op is going to start, but we actually need to start this curriculum then
27:48
So everything should be good here. So we'll save and close. All right, you guys
27:54
So that is it all my classes are set up and ready for our school year to start
27:59
We're gonna be doing a little bit through June and then in July picking up with a couple of those new classes
28:05
before we hit a full load in August. And it does look like a lot
28:09
I'm seeing everybody's calendar right here. So I can just select, like if I just select
28:14
Like if I just wanted to see Luke, I could pull his up and see his schedule or I could see
28:20
you know, just any of my other kids. So it's not, it looks really overwhelming when everybody is there
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But it helps me this way because I can really easily see what's checked off during the day
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what we still need to do, and what we need to kind of plan out
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So I hope this was helpful for you in seeing how to set up your homeschool year and how to add
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those different classes and even how to add those lesson plans from the marketplace and how easy
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that is. Okay, so that's it. My entire homeschool year is set up and ready for us to go. I will
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still need to go in each week and plan out specific lessons I want us to do. Typically, I do that
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on Friday nights or Sunday evenings as part of my weekly routine. Then each day, every school day
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my kids will log in and see their checklist and know exactly what they need to work on
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Now if you don't want your kids to see their schedule on the computer or maybe they just don't need to be on the computer for their schoolwork, you can easily print off their checklist each week and they can follow their list that way
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I love this so much because once I have all of my curriculum planned out and once I have all of this set up in homeschool planet, it makes planning so much easier because when I log in, I can see all of our classes there
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I can see our schedule and I can see even which classes I need to plan out each week, what hours I need to add in every day, what I might need to grade, et cetera
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And my kids don't have to wonder each day what they should be doing. They can easily view their schedule and see what they need to complete each day
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Another big way homeschool planet has really been helpful, has been their easy rescheduling helpers because you guys know that things rarely go exactly as planned
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and we often need to move lessons around or reschedule things. And that's super easy to do using homeschool planet
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It saves me so much time. There are a lot of other great features as far as grading and creating transcripts
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We haven't dug into those much yet, but I'm glad they're there for when we're going to need them in a couple of years
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All right, if you stuck with me this long, I'm excited to share with you a chance to win an entire year's subscription to Home School Planet for free
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A big thank you to Homeschool Planet for sponsoring this giveaway. You can find a link to the giveaway down below where you can enter to win
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So go ahead to that link. There are multiple easy ways you can enter
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So make sure you do as many of them as you can to increase your chances
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And definitely hop over to their website to grab a free trial so you can test out this online
30:49
homeschool planner for yourself. I will leave that link to the free trial down in the description below as well
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I think that's it. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did hit that like button and consider subscribing to my channel for more homeschooling content
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and leave a comment below if you have any questions at all or if there's anything that you would like to share
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Thanks for watching
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