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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Good News Student Planner vs. Pflaum Student Planner

This is a comparison of the 2 Catholic student planners I've used. Do you know of another one I should consider?

I haven't used the Pflaum Teacher planners, just the student ones. I thought the Good News Planners were more "Catholic". (just my opinion). The Pflaum ones had more vocabulary words and I thought more fluff, the Good News had more saint days listed and had a more spiritual focus (again, just my opinion).

I did like that you could fill in your own headings on the Pflaum ones and in what order you want. For me, the fact that the Good News ones had a column for spelling words (or poetry memorization or whatever you wanted to put there) really compensated for that loss.

I just looked at this year's Pflaum Student Planners and it looks like they put headings at the top of the Intermediate Planner and it sort of looks like the two are competing and becoming more alike (the differences were more when I switched from Pflaum to GoodNews last year).

I also found the 2 boxes at the top of each subject distracting and just took up space. It seemed like a good idea at first, but it didn't match the way we do school. We may have 2 or 3 assignments in one category (read book & narrate & sketch for history -or- memorize poem, copywork on bible verse & page 29 of grammar workbook for lang. arts), so I would need to check off each of those lines, not just the whole of Lang. Arts.

The lines in the subject boxes in the Good News planners are much lighter (light grey) and I can easily write over the check off boxes or continue assignments on the next line without it being visually distracting. The Good News Student Planners feel like they have more space to write in...I don't know if they do. Where the spiral comes, the Pflaum planners have a definate edge to the column so there is a margin. In the Good News, the lines extend into the spine so you aren't writing past the line ending that column (maybe that doesn't bother other people, but my kids and I get frustrating feeling like I can't fit everything in if I have to write past the edge -- there's not an artificial edge to interfere in the Good News. I also think the Good News columns are wider, but I don't physically have a plfaum to compare it with right now. I think the headers may be the same, but the footer is smaller in the Good News leaving more space to write in assignments.

I also like how in the header the Good News planners look ahead to next week's Gospel while on the date they have whatever Sunday we just past. The Pflaum planners only look back on last Sunday's Gospel in their 2 page spread. Even in their intermediate planners the pfaum ones seemed...a little simplistic -- I guess it depends on what age you want to use them for.

There's NOTHING WRONG with the Pflaum. I used them for 2 years and was pleased. The Good News planners fit our family better.

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