Recently, I’ve been using My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping) from MyShoolYear.com to plan and track our school work.
MySchoolYear.com is an online home school teaching planner. It is a way for you to plan out every ounce of your school work, extracurricular activities and even keep a running book list for each student. This is an easy way to keep track of grades, standardized tests, attendance and other records.
How Does it Work?
When you first get started, you will be able to create a section for each of your kids. Once that is created, there is a way to add subjects and then specific curriculum under those subjects. After creating a slot for the curriculum you can decide whether to use Rapid Repeat or Quick Split for each book they reading, textbook they are using, or curriculum they are following for each subject.
Rapid Repeat is a very useful tool to use if the student does the same thing every day (like do one worksheet or read a chapter). If there is a test or a quiz once a week you can easily plug that in using Rapid Repeat, as well. There is a space for lesson planning which comes in handy if you need a little bit more detailed explanation to accompany the Rapid Repeat.
Quick Split is good if you or your students are reading a book and you want to have them read the same amount every day. This is an easy way to split up the pages (just tell the software how many pages there are and how many days you are going to be using the curriculum – it will calculate and organize the rest for you!).
There is a section just for a book list and keeping track of how many books your children have read, who the author is, reading level and more details!
There is also the extra-curricular activities section. This gives you the option to plan activities (including volunteer hours) into your child’s day and week. It will track how often and how many hours they have put into this.
There is also a grading feature where you can put the grades in for each subject and the program will tell you the students average by the end of the term.
I set up each of our students names which range from A who is in 8th grade, B who is in 6th, C, 4th and little D who is entering Kindergarten. Under each child’s name I sorted through all the subjects that they are learning and put in the name of the curriculum. The kids who use the same curriculum (like B and C who both do astronomy) I can easily make a copy of so that I don’t have to retype everything into the second students file. I typed in the curriculum and how much we were doing (for instance, twice a week: Mondays and Wednesdays) and how long (30 minutes for this subject). I planned this out for each of our students and then began a book list for them as well.
Our Thoughts?
I think this is a very helpful tool for a type A, organized type of home school mom. We are a Charlotte Mason, low key, do the next thing type of homeschooler and I found myself getting overwhelmed by the level of organization this product provides. Even though there is a way to reschedule lessons, I find that I don’t find myself using the computer to organize (I’m more of a pencil and paper type of girl).
I do, however, love that there is a book list generator and I find that I will most likely use this program for this purpose because I love seeing a running tally of all the books my children have enjoyed throughout the year. I also might use it as a way to record keep – thus using it after the fact more than before. However, this is PERFECT for a personality different than mine who needs to see everything planned out in order to move forward with their year. I totally recommend this to them and I think they would have a lot of fun with My School Year!
To connect with MySchoolYear.com online:
Twitter: https:///www.twitter.com/MySchoolYearWeb @MySchoolYearWeb
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MyschoolyearWeb
Type B homeschool mama, pen & paper gal over here too — and I find all the talk online and in real life about homeschool planning overwhelming and stifling!
I’m glad I’m not the only one LOL!
I know what you mean, Alison! A few years ago I tried to be *that* organized and I felt like I could collapse under all that pressure. Now, I happily “do the next thing” and we are all just fine!