Wordful Wednesday

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I had so much fun at GoWild in WASHIngton, D.C. My roommate was amazing and I met so many new planner friends. Even some local ones that I hope to catch up with soon. I'll be typing up a post this weekend and getting more active on the blog...I have a lot to talk about in general! Until then, be blessed friends!

© 2008 - 2023 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author. 

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Wordless Wednesday

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© 2008 - 2022 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author.

 http://astablebeginning.com

Wordless Wednesday

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© 2008 - 2020 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author.

                                                                       http://astablebeginning.com

Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner 2019/2020 Year ~ a TOS review

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Happy Friday friends! I'm heading to our state homeschool convention right after I post this blog...excited! 

Guess what!? Have you heard the news? The Old Schoolhouse® has their new Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner for 2019/20 Year out just in time for planning season! It's hot off the presses so don't delay in getting your copy! 

If you are a new homeschooling mom or a long term veteran you may already be familiar with have heard of The Old Schoolhouse® and the products they produce. Gena and Paul Suarez head up the family run company and this planner is just one of their many products. This new planner is designed to be the homeschool Mama's assistant with words of encouragement throughout. Let me tell you a little more about it.

If you are like me and prefer paper and pencil to digital when making lesson plans then you need to check out the Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner for 2019/20 Year with devotions written by Gena Suarez and published by The Old Schoolhouse®.  I wasn't always a pen and paper planner, but over the last few years, my planners have become a lifesaving sanity tool.

The Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner is a 9" X 11" inch spiral bound planner with 189 pages. The front and back covers are made from a sturdy, glossy card stock paper with a beautiful floral print. 

Inside the first few pages you'll find the Table of Contents outlining the contents on the planner pages as well as helpful information about how to create an academic transcript. Plus, you are given a blank Transcript to fill out for one of your high school students. Also included in the front pages is a Checklist of Skills learned sheet. It is double-sided and provides room to track courses. 

Next you will find three full pages of calendars for 2019, 2020, and 2021. These calendars run January through December for a glance at yearly planning. I like to use these type of calendars to mark off our school year by quarter and for adding in special days like birthdays and anniversaries. 

After the yearly calendars the monthly calendars you start to get into the monthly encouragements and full size monthly calendar. This calendar starts with July 2019 and runs through June 2020. 

Right before each monthly calendar is where you will find a monthly encouraging Hey,Mama! letter. It includes a full page letter written directly from Gena. Each month has a different focus of encouragement; everything from your homeschool purpose to getting through those fail days on those long winter days. Directly after the letter you have a full page to jot down any important notes you want to remember for the month. 

Flipping to the next page brings you to the monthly calendars that are spread out over two pages. You have large size boxes to write in or you can stick a little note page to remind you of an important event. There is also a large notes section included on the left hand side of each calendar page. The perfect size for jotting down quick notes and ideas. 

Now we are ready to get to the planning pages! There are so many different ways to use these pages to fit your homeschool. For me I tried out three different options before deciding on the one that works best for our homeschool.

With room for 5 students there is plenty of room to use this planner for your whole family! The planner comes set up with the students at the top in blue color blocking while the days or subjects could go down the left hand side. These boxes are also in blue color blocking to set them apart from the actual planning boxes. Each rectangular planning box is unlined but has plenty of space to include the work you need to keep track of for your students.

My kids are all color-coded and have been since birth. Visually, it makes it easier for all to see whose work is what in the planner. After playing around with different layouts, I found that for our family, the best use of this planner is to use it for my two youngest students, McKenzie, my rising 4th grader, and Micah, my rising Kindergartener. My older two girls have their own school planners that they keep track of.

I typically plan the following week on Friday afternoons while my kids are finishing seat work. I write out the week's plan in my main teacher planner that I keep for my own records and then copy the lessons into this planner for my younger students while my older girls copy their own work into their planners. My kids like to mark off their daily assignments when they are done so they do this in their planner and not my main one. 

Since I am only using this planner for two students I decided to modified the pages to make it fit for our needs. I found that the three column, one-page spread worked best for us because they only school 4 days a week, taking Wednesdays off for our co-op. do this I used some of our favorite washi tapes and printable subject tags. McKenzie and Micah are color-coded pink and green respectively, so I use my erasable pens to write out lessons. 

Another modification I made was to take the July 2020 page and turn it into a June 2019 by simply using stickers. I also added month tabs to the planning pages for easy flipping. We are still finishing up the last of our lessons and the Hey, Mama! letter of encouragement was just the right thing I needed to read as we make changes to our school. This year we have experienced trials that have made me fall to my knees more than once, all the while showing grace to those who have hurt us. 

"Stay soft, Mama. Turn your heart toward Him, no matter the circumstances. Remain in His Word. Your children are watching, even when you don't realize it. Model Christ. Prove your growth. Practice grace. And hug your little ones close to you today".

After the planning pages the rest of the planner includes 30+ pages of helpful goals, charts and logs for up to 5 children including:

~ Semester and Yearly goals

~ 180 day Attendance Charts 

~ Book logs

~ Curriculum planning sheets

Overall, I love this planner! I love that I can customize it to fit my needs and still keep its functionality intact. I have found that this is the perfect planner for me to use with my younger children as I guide them on their way to independence.  This planner also doles out the right amount of encouragement that I need on a given day. Looking back and reading the Hey, Mama! letter throughout the month has really helped me stay focused in my work as a homeschooling Mama. Homeschooling is not an easy task, but a rewarding one by far!  If you looking for a planner to help with your homeschool organization that comes with encouragement for the homeschooling mama, then I recommend you check out the Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner for the 2019-2020 Year with devotions written by Gena Suarez and published  The Old Schoolhouse®. You'll be glad you did!

But don't just take my word for it! Check out what my 81 CrewMates thought about this planner by clicking the banner below.

Company ~ The Old Schoolhouse®
Product ~ Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner for 2019/20 Year 
Format ~ spiral bound book
Price ~ $29.00 USD *on sale for $22.00 USD*
Ages ~ Homeschool Mama's (and Papa's too)

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© 2008 - 2019 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author.     

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Homeschool Buyers Co-op: Homeschool Planet ~ a TOS review

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It’s that time of the year again when planners start there “new” year. As a homeschooling mom I know I am knee deep in planning for our fast approaching new school year. I love that with Homeschool Planet from Homeschool Buyers Co-op I can do so much more than just creating assignments, I can actually track our busy lives!

 Wouldn’t it be great to have something to help you keep track of everything in your busy life such as homeschooling, housework, activities and more? For the past 6 weeks I have been testing out the online planner to keep everything organized so that everyone can get where they need to be at the prescribed time. Yes, sometimes it’s overwhelming and I fail miserably, but hey, I am human.

 A few years ago, I hadn’t even heard of Homeschool Buyers Co-op and I hope I am not the only one who thought that they were just for buying curriculum at a great price? Homeschool Planet gives you all the tools you need to organize your home and homeschool so you are running in tip top shape with their online planner.

To get started is as simple as having a computer with internet access. Once you create a free account on the Homeschool Buyers Co-op page you can sign up for a free 30 day trial and no credit card is needed! How great is that! This planner packs a big punch with all the features it has to offer including the new Lesson Plan feature! Let me tell you about three of my favorite features. 

Assignment rescheduler makes the top of my list because life gets busy and who has time to erase and write out plans again! With this handy feature, simply choose how you want to handle the assignment. Either reschedule the overdue work alone, reschedule the overdue and today’s assignment, or just reschedule the entire day’s assignments by making it a day off. I have had to use this a few times and it is so nice to not have to rewrite anything. Everything just simply shifts a day.


The new pre-made lesson plans are a dream come true! Not only do I not have to plan out the course, I did not have to schedule the program into the planner either. These lesson plans are available for many of the popular curriculum's including:

Saxon Math 

The Mystery of History 

Brave Writer

 IEW 

Math Mammoth

 Veritas Press 

Wordly Wise 3000 Online 

Alpha Omega to name a few

Right now Homeschool Planet is running a sale for the month of June, where people signing up for a free one-month trial will receive a set of free lesson plans, that are valued at $5-15, from their new Lesson Plan Marketplace. It's definitely a win-win just for taking a look at the program! 

The attendance tracker is a great feature that allows you to not only track the days you school, but also mark off any other days that are holidays, etc. Since we school 6 weeks on, 1 week off this was a great feature so I could see at a glance when the break week fell on the calendar.

 The Transcript feature is a huge time saver especially since we are heading back through the high school cycle and adding another student. With Marie I waited too long to start her transcript and it was quite overwhelming to input 3 years worth of classes and grades. I have already started inputing Madison’s classes and will start pre-loading Mikayla’s in the near future. The transcript can be printed out if you need to turn it in or for storage in your yearly binder.

While this is not our “busy” season, I appreciate this planner and all that it offers. Before getting a chance to review this planner I would have told you I was strictly a paper planner gal, but now I can definitely say that there are features of this online planner that I love and can’t get with a paper planner! It has simplified my life and allows me to keep on task and on schedule and get everyone to where they need to be. I also love that the girls can log on and see at a glance what is happening for the day too.

Even if you are a paper planner, I would wholeheartedly recommend you checking out this program. They offer a free trial so you can’t go wrong. Try it out and see how you like it, don’t just take my word for it. And be sure to check out what my CrewMates thought of this program by clicking the banner below.

Company ~ Homeschool Buyers Co-op

Product ~ Homeschool Planet

Format ~ online planner

Price ~ $65.00 a year or $6.95 a month

Ages ~ Household managers 

Social Media Links:

 •Facebook @homeschoolbuyers • Twitter @hsbuyerscoop • Pinterest @homeschoolbuyer • Instagram @homeschoolbuyers • Google+

©2008 - 2017 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author.

 http://astablebeginning.com

MySchoolYear.com: Homeschool Record Keeping ~ a TOS review

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I am really trying to be more organized in my thoughts and plans. Because we have a lot going on in this season of life and I don’t want to forget someone or something. In our schooling I am trying to stay ahead of the game now that we are headed back through high school again. My state is pretty relaxed as far as record keeping goes, but I do like to track attendance and keep lesson plans for myself. Recently, I've been using My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping) from MyShoolYear.com to do so.

MySchoolYear.com is an online lesson planner and record keeper that allows you to keep track of all the important things you need to track. It features:

 ~ automated attendance tracking 

~ lesson plan generators 

~ automated grading ~

 friendly teacher’s reminders 

~ activity tracking for awards, reading logs, volunteer work, and sports 

~ reports to create transcripts, report cards and more 

~ lesson plan sharing if you want to share with others 

At first I will admit I was like a deer in the headlights when I started using this program. Not fault of the program, just my own. I was overwhelmed by the days activites so I logged out and came back the next morning refreshed and found that it is actually quite user friendly after I played around with it for awhile.

Setting up your account with your student’s information only takes a few minutes for each child. Once that is done, you can begin adding in classes and daily lesson plans. Tracking grades, attendance, reading, and extracurricular activities is a breeze with this program. Because we are in our summer learning period right now, I did not add in any current lesson plans, rather, I went ahead and started adding in stuff for the new school year. I am super impressed with the book log and can’t wait to have a place where I can list all the books the girls have read or been read to for the year. It will be a great visual accomplishment to look back and say you read this many books this school year; especially for my daughter who is not an avid reader.

Another feature of MySchoolYear that I am impressed with is the report card feature. Recently my children asked for a report card and I was happy because they wanted one, but then I thought oh no, I need to prepare one. Now, all I have to do is make sure I input the grades into this lesson tracker and the program will automatically generate a report card for me. YES!!! A huge plus in my book. The program will also produce a transcript for my high schooler too and that is one less thing that I have to do.
Overall, I am super pleased with this homeschool record keeping program! I am personally a paper and pen/pencil kind of girl, but I do see myself being drawn into the digital/online world utilizing this online program for the rest of our yearly subscription and beyond, especially since it generates the reports that I need and want to track. At $5.00 a month or $40.00 for the year, it is priced just right for my “extras” budget. And because we are a large family, that price is for unlimited students whether I have 1 or 12 MySchoolYear.com has me covered.

Be sure to check out what my CrewMates thought of this program by clicking the banner below.

Company ~ MySchoolYear.com

Product ~  My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping)

Price ~ $5.00 month or $40.00 yearly memebership

Ages ~ homeschool planners

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 #hsreviews #recordkeeping #homeschoolorganization

©2008 - 2016 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author. 

 http://astablebeginning.com

Hey Mama! Schoolhouse Planner, 2016-2017 ~ a TOS review

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Have you heard the news about the new planner from The Old Schoolhouse? This year they have brought back their Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner 2016-2017 in print format. It's hot off the presses and just in time for planning season. 

If you are a homeschooling veteran or a newbie you may have heard of The Old Schoolhouse and the products they produce. Gena and Paul Suarez head up the family run company. This new planner is designed to be the homeschool Mama's assistant. Let me tell you a little more about it.

The Hey Mama Schoolhouse Planner is a 9" X 11" inch spiral bound, 192 page planner. The first few pages include 2016, 2017, 2018 full size calendars for at a glance yearly planning. I like to use these type of calendars to mark off special days like birthdays and anniversaries.

After the yearly calendars the monthly calendars start with the month of July. The monthly calendars are a two page spread with large boxes to write in. If you like to use the mini post-it notes are are the perfect size for them. There is also a notes section included on the calendar page. The perfect size for jotting down quick notes and ideas. Right after the monthly calendar is an encouraging Hey Mama, saying and a full page notes page for those longer notes that you want to write down. My favorite Hey Mama quote is below because sometimes it is easy to forget when you are going through the motions of the day...

"Hey Mama,

1. You made it through another day.

2. Your kids are walking the same journey with you.

3. It;s a madhouse sometimes, but everyone knows they are loved.

4.You are the team God put together. Everyone fills a much-needed role.

5. The BIGGER PICTURE is the long-lasting one. You are a Mama who endures. You are a family running a good race.

6. Your're not hung up on the little fails and bumps. Together, they are woven into that big tapestry; i.e., the big picture.

7. It all means something. It's not random. There is a purpose and joy.

And His hand is on your head tonight". 

~pg.130

The planning pages begin right after the calendar pages. these pages 
have space for up to seven children or seven subjects down the left hand column. The top row has space for the five days of the week or five children. These are interchangeable depending on how you plan.  I personally use the columns on the left for our subjects and the ones at the top for the days of the week. To distinguish between each of my children I use color coordinated markers.

The rest of the planner includes helpful goals, charts and logs for up to 5 children including:

• Monthly, Semester, and Yearly goals
• 180 day Attendance Charts with boxes to check off 
• Book logs
• Curriculum planning sheets
• Homeschool Contact List
• 36 General Writing prompts
• Story Starters
• The Thirteen Colonies by Date
• Timeline of Inventions {I found this really interesting}
• US Presidents and their wives {I love that the wives were included too.}
• Branches of Federal, State and Local Governments
• United States and Capitals in order of when they joined the Union with date of Statehood and abbreviation
• Helpful Academic Transcript sample with instructions on what to include
• A chart for learned skills and  other Courses that were taken throughout the year

Overall, I love this planner! It is the right amount of encouragement that I need on a given day. I have not started using the planner fully because we just ended our formal schooling days for the 20165 - 2016 year. But we are in the midst of our summer learning time and I plan to use the longer notes section to write down what we got done.

When our 2016-2017 homeschool year does start back up on August 1st, I plan to use this planner as a keepsake yearly planner and write down the subjects/activities that actually got completed each week. I really don't enjoy erasing and crossing out when I have to shift things around so I will use this planner as a final jot down of what actually got done each week and our spiral notebooks for what I want to complete each week. I have went ahead an added in pencil our 6 week on schedule and the weeks plan to take off along with the days that I am scheduled to teach for our virtual co-op. I also have already included practice days for my gymnasts and other pertinent school and sports related items.

I would really like to see maybe a few more planning pages offered within the print edition. We are year around schoolers so having maybe 5-6 more planning pages for summer learning would be a great addition. I know that would be possible if I purchased the digital edition of the planner so it's not a huge deal breaker on my end.
Normally the planner retails for $29.00 but right now through July 15th you can purchase this planner using the coupon code: CREWCODE and get this planner for just $19.00, shipping included. That is a $10.00 savings!

If you are looking for a great quality planner I recommend you definitely checking out the Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner 2016-2017 for this upcoming year. Be sure to check out what my CrewMates think of this planner by clicking the banner below. 

Company ~ The Old Schoolhouse

Product ~ Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner 2016-2017

Price ~ retails for $29.00 but right now through July 15th you can purchase this planner using the coupon code: CREWCODE and get this planner for just $19.00, shipping included.

Ages ~ Homeschool Mom's and Dads

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©2008 - 2016 A Stable Beginning. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author. 

 http://astablebeginning.com