Back To School!

It's that time of the year!  When every parent is jumping for joy and every kid is dreading (ROFL!)

My daughter shopping for cute pencils.

I know I am.  I've gone school supply shopping.  Everything on that list is done!  I only have the school outfits to buy.  I'm truly dreading that since I have a pre-teen going into 7th grade.  EEEEEH!  Anytime I bring up the subject of school, I get a huge sigh and an eye roll.  Of course I snicker and laugh enjoying the looks on both of my kid's faces.

With the start of school coming I have been searching for planners this year for my daughter.  Every year the school gives a small planner to the students.  I noticed that year after year she doesn't really use it...she just wasn't feeling it.   This year I went all out.  We went to Target, Office Depot, Staples, and the Erin Condren stores.  

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• Target, Office Depot, Staples:  while they have a large variety of planners for the most part none of them were truly school related or easy for students to use.  The layouts were all horizontal with no break out of class sections.  They were beautiful for the most part and I would love to have any of them (then again I'm kind of  planner hoarder), but they were not what she needed. 

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Price:  $19.99

• Erin Condren:  at the beginning of June I had walked into the store with my daughter to take a look and see if there were any student planners available.  I was told they would have it out in the next week.  went back several times in the next two weeks and NADA...Zip...Zilch!  Finally came out in towards July...FYI.  Once we went to take a look I found that it was a vertical planner with a section for each  day and it's not what she needed.  She loved the idea of really customizing her planner and adding in tons of stickers. 

Price: $37.00

I started ask here and there if there were any planners that had sections by period.  Since my daughter is now in middle school she has 8 periods that she needs to attend.  That being the case, she would require something that allowed for sectioning off classes.  I saw that Erin Condren (EC) has a teacher planner which would work great for middle and high school kids because of class sections. The thing is that for a middle school kid it's not always the best seeing as the price is pretty high up there and I don't even know if I can justify spending this much (I see how she treats her school items).

​What did I end up with?  I went with a boxed kit from The Happy Planner Magical Things Classic Student Box.  Here is a list of things that made me decide for this kit. 

1. While it costs almost as much as EC, It came with some extras: washi tape, stickers, sticky notes dash board, page marker, notes inserts.  This made it worth the price. 
2. I can add in some extra inserts.  They are easy enough to make or can purchase more from Etsy.  I made her a reading log for her planner. 
3. It has a total of 7 sections for classes (one of her 8 is gym).  This makes identifying home work easy.  
4. I can keep this for a whole other year by simply printing out whole new calendars and if I want i can replace the covers.  This made the whole $39.99 a whole lot more affordable. 

Price:  $39.99

This is my own personal feel for this item.  It doesn't mean that I don't like EC or other planner products.  It's just what I found to be more functional for my daughter at a good cost.   The one thing I will say is that I find the EC planners to have a better paper quality to it.  I personally have both HPC & EC. 

Here are the two items that I had made with my daughter in mind.  they are available at the Etsy shop.  

Printable Reading Log - Happy Planner

Buy It Now!

School Days Planner Stickers

Buy It Now!

That concludes my thoughts on school planners.  I hope this helps you in your search for a student planner.  I know I wish some of the planners had more pics online of the inside of each to help me identify what I wanted so that I didn't have to go from store to store.  That would have saved me a lot of time.  I hope that this little bit helps you.

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Hope to see you back again.  Lots of love from my daughter & myself to you!

XOXO - Heartcraftpaper