Review of Special Needs Planner

Description:
A day planner and calendar created for parents of children with special needs. In the introduction, the planner is described as being designed to “help you organize not only your homeschool days, but the additional tasks involved in raising your special child.” While the planner is specifically directed at homeschooling families, other families may find much of the planner helpful, such as the forms for keeping track of therapy and medical appointments, and the high-quality photo task analysis schedules. The planner also contains GFCF recipes, evaluation/testing tracking sheets, medical history and other medical reports, medication information, a behavior diary, a food diary, a bedtime routine form (useful for leaving with babysitters or other caregivers), chore charts (with pictures), and a behavior reward/point chart. The planner is filled in by the parent either by typing into the PDF document or by printing it out and writing on it.

Pros:
I can see this planner being very helpful in keeping a parent very organized. It allows you to keep a great deal of important information about your child in one convenient place.

Includes a wide variety of useful forms, as described above.

The visual task analysis forms for various life skills were great! They include high-quality, full-color photos of children completing the steps involved in a variety of skills including washing hands, brushing teeth, checking a book out of the library, cleaning a child’s bedroom, and many more.

Provides tips and articles about homeschooling a child with special needs.

Cons:

Some of the forms were very general and I’m not exactly sure how they would be used by a family.

Much of the planner is comprised of various calendars, almost identical to a calendar you could purchase from any store.

Overall, I believe that this planner would be helpful for any family of a child with a disability who would like to have one organized location to keep all relevant medical and educational information about their child. Data collection about behaviors and learning and how these may be linked with medications, eating habits, and sleep patterns is important for students with autism, and this planner may help track that information. I’m not sure it would be that valuable to teachers or other educators, with the exception of a few of the forms and the picture task analysis sheets. The planner seems to be a helpful resource and I would recommend it for parents, families, and caregivers. You can view sample pages of the planner here: http://www.theoldschoolhousestore.com/sample/TOS_SpecialNeedsPlannerSAMPLER.pdf

The download of the planner can be purchased here: http://www.theoldschoolhousestore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=429_479&products_id=19665

A CD of the planner can be purchased here: http://www.theoldschoolhousestore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=191_193&products_id=19672