Lesson Planet - review

One of my favorite things about the internet is the ability to find all kinds of educational information and materials at my fingertips. I remember an old ad for Yellow Pages that said to "let your fingers do the walking." They meant, of course, to use the phone... but with the internet it's even easier to explore the world from the comfort of your own home. As we all know, there is such a wealth of information available that it's hard to know where to start.

I was excited to be given a 3-month membership to Lesson Planet recently as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew. It offers the ability to search over 150,000 teacher reviewed lesson plans and 75,000 worksheets. Doesn't that sound great? Unfortunately, the problem I ran into is that there is no quality control and just the sheer volume of materials available made it hard to find "the good stuff." And then, the very first outside link I clicked on, when I searched on a topic I was interested in, brought up a "Page Not Found" error. My take: I love the idea, but I just don't have time to sort through everything that's available to find what I need. However, they do offer a 10 day free trial to allow teachers and parents to try the site with no obligation, so you can try it for yourself and see what you think.

Members of Lesson Planet also have access to web-based tools including LessonMaker, NewsletterMaker and Online Storage. In addition to searching for lesson plans and worksheets, they are able to create their own plans using the additional online features. After the free trial, membership is only $39.95/year.