TOS Homeschool Review Crew - Lesson Planet

What is Lesson Planet??? Lesson Planet is a search engine with over 150,000 Teacher Reviewed Lesson Plans and 75,000 Worksheets from gathered from all over the Internet. You can search for any subject in their search box and then limit it by age and by the ratings. Here is a quick one minute tutorial to help you see what the lesson planet is all about. 

Some parts of the website are viewable by anyone you can view any of the links at the bottom of the page. The FAQ has further information you may need. For example: Where do the online lesson plans come from? Lesson Planet's teacher-reviewers are constantly combing the Internet identifying, reviewing and rating all the lesson plans that are available on the Web. In many ways Lesson Planet is like a searchable guidebook to online lesson plans and other online teacher resources.

Here are the subjects you can search:

If you choose to try out Lesson Planet with the Free Trial here are some features you should check out that are for members only:

• On the left side there is a box that shows you your recent searches in case you need to search for that topic again.
• Lesson planning articles written by teacher subject guides, including one for homeschooling at http://www.lessonplanet.com/us/subject_guides. Click on the orange link in the box to go to the complete list of articles for that subject. You can also subscribe to any of the guides by RSS feed.
• Curriculum calendar: http://www.lessonplanet.com/calendar with a list of events for each day and links to the search engine for lessons on that topic. (Non-members can view the calendar but not the links to the lessons).
• Members of Lesson Planet also have access to web-based tools including  LessonMaker (make your own lesson and submit it), NewsletterMaker and Online Storage. 

Now for my opinion: This kind of site is just not for me. I found a number of problems with the site. I looked for hours and did not find any lessons or worksheets that we would use in our homeschool. Most of the lessons are made by and for classroom teachers. Some of the lessons are for books that I don't have, that are not even specified. One of the lessons I found said to look at the TV... (What???) then page 145 of "the" book... (what book???). Most of the lesson plans are links to other sites, some of which require further memberships (some of them paid memberships), some of the links go to nowhere, they are dead, some just link to other free sites with lesson plans. Some of the lesson plans require further planning and most require a larger group of children than a homeschool family has. The worksheets were either useless, twaddle and busy work, or something that I cover in other ways with things I already use and have. Sometimes when you do a search you get all kinds of non-relevant lesson suggestions. For instance, I searched Renaissance and got a bunch of US map lessons, what's up with that?? Also, with so many great lesson plans for free on the Internet, if you are interested in lesson plans, I just would not pay for the membership. Google search will get you so many lesson plans. Just do a search and use the subject you want and then put "lesson plan" after that. Oh, and because this is a site made for and mostly by public school teachers it is definitely secular in origin. Though this is not a primary reason for not using the site I wanted to make sure you knew.

There is a possibility that this membership is exactly what you are looking for, though this is not for me. With the Free Trial you can check it out and see what you think for yourself.

Lesson Planet has a 10 day Free Trial to allow teachers and parents to try the site with no obligation. Membership to the site is $39.95/year.

Out of five stars I give Lesson Planet: 

To see what my other crew members have to say about the Lesson Planet check out the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog.

***Lesson Planet provided me with 3 month membership so that I could do my review. Though I received this product for free I have given an honest review of it here in this post.


Debbie