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FREE Starter Kit for Student and Teen Planners

August 19, 2011 By debrabell 3 Comments

The Ultimate Homeschool Planner for moms will be widely available next week. But the student and teen planners are still (at the outside) a month from being released. We are working diligently to get them to you sooner. In the meantime, I secured permission to create a starter kit. The attached file includes planning pages from both the student and teen planner so you can use these to get your homeschool under way. I had to watermark them to prevent viral copying, but I tried to make that as light as possible.

You are free to reproduce these pages for your personal use — and you are free to distribute the starter kit on your own blog or Facebook pages. Actually — thanks so much in advance for doing so.

Student and Teen Planner Starter Kit

In case you missed our most popular post: http://wp.me/p15e7J-bo That’s a sneak peek inside the Mom’s Planner, now available for purchase from Apologia and CBD.

Filed Under: Ultimate Planners Tagged With:
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The Ultimate Homeschool Planner for Moms Is Out!

August 17, 2011 By debrabell 6 Comments

Yes, we all got our first edition yesterday.  They look beautiful.  The fastest way to get one is by ordering it directly from Apologia over the phone. As soon as I get my supply next week, I will make them available here. And yes there will be giveaways – so make sure you are following me on Facebook and Twitter. The first event is a Facebook Party! thrown by Apologia at 9 PM EST tomorrow night. I’ll be there.

I need to give a shoutout to the many, many homeschooling moms who gave us such helpful feedback during the development process. These include family and friends in each of the production team’s locale ( This was a multi-state venture.) And in particular, thank you to a wonderful group of homeschooling families serving throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia who spent a long afternoon months ago with Zan Tyler, my editor, and me pretty much reinventing the first prototype we showed them.  So this planner will work for your family, we pray :) , both here and abroad!

We are thrilled to finally have these ready to ship. So far, everyone we’ve shown the real product to comments on the beautiful colors, the bright purple spiral binding (which makes it easy to spot on the shelf) and the emphasis on God’s grace in our lives. Enjoy.

Filed Under: Ultimate Planners
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Push Pop Press – The Future of the Book

August 16, 2011 By debrabell 2 Comments

The future of learning is a topic of great interest to me — just as technology is rapidly reinventing the way we live, I think technology is rapidly reinventing the way we learn. Case in point: Push Pop Press set out to reimagine the book of the future. Here’s a peak inside their first creation:

Al Gore’s Our Choice Guided Tour from Push Pop Press on Vimeo.

Don’t get hung-up on the subject matter. Rather, what do you think about the possibilities here? Is this a more powerful learning tool than 20th century textbook?

Unfortunately, Push Pop Press sold their soul to Facebook recently, and no further digital book publishing is planned in their future. But I’m sure other start-up companies will soon be mirroring their reinvention.

What do you think? Do you see ways this kind of presentation of content might be motivating for your kids? Is there a downside?

Filed Under: Digital Education
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Sneak Peek: Ultimate Weekly Planner for Teens

August 3, 2011 By debrabell 9 Comments

I want to give you a quick look inside the forthcoming Ultimate Weekly Planner for Teens. ( While part of the Apologia team is on vacation, I grabbed a few pages to show you. I didn’t ask, hope that’s okay.) I think it is so hip and cool… and by association I am therefore (possibly) still hip and cool. (Are you buying this.) Anyway, here it is:

Sneak Peek Teen Planner

Thoughts?

So far, the teen focus groups have loved the design, and moms have loved the organizational system. I am particularly excited about all the study aids we’ve put in the back. My goal is to make our planners for students and teens the Swiss army knife of the planner world (which I did not realize is quite vast.)

Besides plenty of space for monthly planning and weekly assignments, we’ve created lots of forms for the record-keeping collegebound teens need to do (and not you). We’ve also given them checklists for high school graduation and a timeline for college admissions so they don’t miss something important. And there is a big study aid section with the kinds of information teens repeatedly use in each subject area.  Notice how I managed to sneak in some SAT vocabulary practice, too.

Finally, we’ve made it small enough to fit into a big purse or backpack — no excuse then to leave it behind.  Feedback before we go to press? Should we print a gazillion? (This should be out before the end of summer.)

Related: Sneak Peek Inside Mom’s Planner.

Filed Under: Independent Learning, Ultimate Planners Tagged With:
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