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Thursday, June 28, 2012

What would the ideal planner for home and school look like?

Okay, so I look at Erin Condren’s website for the first time.  I think I fell in love.  For anyone who loves organization and color and personalized things…it looks amazing.   I’m just not so sure I can afford her stuff.

My experience with planners: 

In college, I liked a small planner (small enough to fit in a large purse) with a space for each day and a monthly calendar. 

I tried the physical lesson planning book you write in.  It didn’t make it very far – like maybe September and then sat empty. I also hated having to rewrite my subjects each week. I liked my lessons typed out, but I also want a physical planner/notebook to write daily-to-do lists. 

Then, it gets confusing when you have personal to-do-lists and school to-do-lists and grocery lists and now there are blogging to-do-lists.   I need a planner that meshes all this together.  My lessons were usually typed in Excel.  Charts and boxes keep everything neat and uniform.  I always make my tables/charts in Excel and then copy them to PowerPoint or Word. 

Here is my question for you.  What would your ideal planner look like?  What would be in it?  Would you want a planner that would allow you to mesh life and school together?

I am soon going to upload all my binder covers and spine labels as editable files in Powerpoint (so you could type your name or a student’s name in them) but with the graphics still protected.  Would you be interested in a life/teacher planner that could work the same way?  You could print out the pages you needed for the week or month or year to write on. Or type on it in PowerPoint and then print it out.  Here are my thoughts at the moment of things to include:

The 2012-2013 calendar months
Daily and weekly planning pages to allow variety
Some different lesson planning formats
Weekly lists/forms to put blog topics and ideas
A form to put what bills you have and when they are due
Ideas for lessons/TpT to track how much of it you have completed (since I like to always start new things as inspiration strikes me and it takes me awhile to finish them)
To-do-lists
Grocery lists
A library book list to write down what books I want to get at the library for what theme/topic
A form to write notes from staff meetings and committee meetings with action items and deadlines
Form to use with weekly clubs/tutoring to write what you did and new action items
Rotation schedule charts for small groups/centers
Forms for planning for a six weeks what books/activities you want to use to meet the Common Core Standards (which means I would probably break the file down by grade level)

Anything else you would want in a planner? (I don’t have kids, but maybe something to keep track of after school activities by kid?)

What sorts of colors/themes would you want?  Clipart makes everything better.

Here is a little freebie quick reference teacher planner I made to give you some of my lesson planning format ideas.  I also just made a little weekly blogging form freebie to keep track of blog topics and all the giveaways.  Am I only the one that goes to enter a giveaway and then realizes I already entered it?  I think all the giveaways are fun.  I just find them hard to all keep track of, so I made a form to write down the giveaways for the week and I can check it off after I finish entering them.  (The owl clipart is from the 3am teacher). Speaking of giveaways, don't forget about mine.

I also am going to have to break the rule and do another post later for the Versatile blogger award.

7 comments:

  1. I have the same problem! I like to write things down, but also like them typed. My lesson plan book was used for maybe 3 weeks and then tossed in my desk drawer...

    I've not checked out Erin's website, but I think I'm going to have to do so. I'm hearing about it everywhere!!

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    1. Her stuff looks amazing! But I'm not sure I'm ready to spend $50 when Barnes and Noble has decent planners for $15

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  2. We have so many calendars from our curriculum guides that it is hard to put everything in one binder. They are working on things this summer so hopefully we can get everything in one place. =)

    I love your blogging *freebie*. I keep a notebook but it is pretty scary and probably makes sense only to me! =)


    Heather
    Heather's Heart

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    1. Haha...I have a journal that is mainly post it notes. I don't think it makes sense to anyone but me.

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  3. I have everything for school in a school calendar and home in a home calendar. I would love to find the perfect way to mesh the 2, but I think I would keep my lesson planning separate, that way if I didn't need it, I wouldn't have to lug it back and forth with everything else.

    Thanks for both of the freebies (the blogging sheet keeps returning an error when I go to Google Docs, so I can't download it).

    Faithful in First

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    1. I updated the link, so maybe it will work now. I kind of agree with you. I actually like the planner I carry home to be small enough to fit in a purse, so I am playing around with it to see if I can make something that would work. I may end up just making my own lesson planner and then buying something like Erin Condren's Life Planner instead of her lesson planner.

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  4. WOW! I have never heard of Erin Condren before. My world has been changed!

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