Debbie Chikousky is an agricultural columnist that has combined her love of farming with her love of homeschooling. Her writing allows her to be a stay at home farm mom with her four children. Although the two oldest went through public school, their daughter is now a homeschooling high school graduate and the youngest isn’t far behind. Combining homeschooling with a busy day of farm chores and teenage life can be a challenge but it is always fun. She utilizes free tools as much as possible in her endeavors to keep learning connected to life. You can read more about her farm life at Chikousky Farms.
Name of Product: Calendar Hub

Link to Product/website: http://www.calendarhub.com/

Description of Product: “Get a Calendar That You Can Access From Anywhere.  Keep it private, share it in a group, or even publish it on your blog.”

Debbie’s Description of Product: CalendarHub is a free web calendar that can be used at home to create personal calendars (to keep track of birthdays and social functions or create reminders for your bills), but it doesn’t stop there. This tool provides the means to also manage and share information with your family, friends, and groups. You can use it to post a calendar to your own blog or to create a classroom calendar for your homeschool student and share it with them. You and your children can use it to keep track of exam dates, homework due dates, and project deadlines. The subscribe option lets subscribe to your favorite sports teams, group, and organization calendars to keep track of all your interests and obligations in one place. If you have a calendar program, such as Outlook, that supports the ICal standard it can be imported to CalendarHub.

Homeschool Uses: When I found CalendarHub I was searching for a way to organize a homeschooling, farming family of six. I wanted to be able to plan trips to the city around events that fit into our curriculum plan. (i.e. free days at the Winnipeg Art Gallery). This site can do all that.  I signed up for my free account and went exploring. When you enter data onto your personal calendar you have a choice of making these dates private, group or public.

In very little time you can make a personal calendar for all your child’s important school dates. For example, our mathematics curriculum has tests every four lessons. So for the month of January I entered them into the calendar. Any other assignments can be done the same way.

Over the years our family has missed many free schooling opportunities that were offered at museums in the city just because I forgot the date. This product gives me the ability to enter my town in the search and find all sorts of local events and activities!  I can enter those that are of interest to me onto my calendar with the click of a button!  The public events are kept up to date by RSS feed on the site.

The subscription tool can be used share your calendar with the other members of your family also. You can use this option to import calendars from sports teams, etc. that your child may be involved in. With all this at your scheduling fingertips you may never miss a practice again or have to reschedule school because of a forgotten commitment.

Content and Safety: Only the users themselves can share personal information with each other. If desired, users can publish their calendars to the public.

Debbie’s Experience Using the Product: I found this site to be very easy to use. The only skill required to enter an event on a calendar day is a mouse click and some reading skills.

Summary: Using CalendarHub to streamline our family schedule is going to allow me more time to spend teaching and less time scheduling. It will also make it easier for the children to be independent because I can email them their own copies and they can keep track themselves. I am looking forward to working a lot more on this site.

Editor’s Note: Check out these other FREE Organizational Tools:
The Ultimate Online Organizer. Perfect for Homeschooling Families!
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