HomeSchool Office - A TOS Homeschool Crew Review

In early February I learned that I had been selected to review HomeSchool Office, a product Lord Heritage. 

I was really happy to be selected because in my state I am reviewed annually, and my record-keeping abilities, even after all these years, leave something to be desired. I am hoping HomeSchool Office will not only help us to stay on track in our daily plans, but will also help me to get my portfolio together when it comes time for my year-end review.

I received an email telling me how to register for my account. My email was different than what you would get in that I was being given an account to review. You would be purchasing their product from their website, and then you would receive an email with further instructions.

So, the initial email has been like gold to me. Whenever I go back to make changes to my plans on the HomeSchool Office program, I find I have forgotten what to do, where to go... The initial email takes me by the hand, says, "Go to ...(website) and click on ...(link)". So I am very careful with that email. If you're wondering, I'm an older mom -- at that age where I walk into a room and have to stop to remember why I am there, and sometimes retrace my steps to get recollection of what I was about to do. ::sigh::

So after the initial registration and creation of my account (which would be the same for you), the email told me a code to enter for "Payment" - where you would enter a credit card number. Once that is done, you log in, which takes you to the "Home" screen for the program - it has the above picture of the girl on the rock with Jeremiah 29:11.

The email then explained their method for you to contact them if you need help (start a "Support Ticket"). The next thing you do is go to their section called "Knowledge Base", which teaches you everything you need to know to set up your database. I found it helpful to have two windows going simultaneously so that each time I watched a video for what to do next, I could go do it immediately. (These days my short-term memory is really short!)

So I found it most helpful for me to get this started on a day when I could really focus on it. If you are the same way, maybe you could get hubby to take the kids somewhere on a Saturday while you set it up. Or, if you do it during the summer, do it in spurts while the kids are outside playing.

Once I was set up, it was time-consuming, but a joy, to determine for each course where I am (trying to forget where I should have been), and plot out daily assignments for what my son should do each day in Algebra, Biology, Literature, etc. For certain subjects I plotted things out all the way to the end of the school year (Algebra and Biology), where the assignment schedule is very clear. For other subjects I am entering the assignments as we go (Literature, History, Bible, Art, etc.). The program is so smart that it keeps telling me that I have not entered enough assignments for the student for the year. Well, it is going to say that this year because I am not prepared to go back and fill in what we did from September until February.

Next I really appreciated being able to record the test grades. Now we're cooking like real school! I mean, I don't have a grade book like my teachers used to have. When I give my student a test, he takes it, I grade it, I give it back to him, and then I need it back for his portfolio. I am constantly stressing over, "Where is test #5?", not so much for the portfolio review but for calculating his grade. Now, instead, I record his test score in HomeSchool Office. Then, if a test is missing later at least I have the grade to calculate his final grade for his transcript. The portfolio reviewer needs samples of his work throughout the year, but does not need to see all his tests or anything so specific as that.

In addition to keeping track of grades that I give my student on assignments, HomeSchool Office also keeps track of days attended. I am able to indicate a day as a holiday that we do school on -- how cool is that? I mean, we do not take all the same holidays as our local public school. If we have a sudden change of schedule, like pretend a relative goes into the hospital and school (or certain subjects) doesn't happen -- you can easily bump the entire schedule forward a day or merge with the next day. (I haven't used that feature yet, so I won't attempt to describe how you do it, but the instructions were very clear.)

HomeSchool Office has you set up separate calendars per student and/or per topic, as fits your needs. I have one calendar for my one student. I have another calendar for his Boy Scout troop's activities. I have a calendar for medical appointments. I have another calendar for product review due dates. I am now able to have, all in one place, super-imposed or merged, our school schedule, medical appointments, Boy Scout activities, review due dates -- everything and anything that I want to combine that is important to me, as much or as little as I want to see at one time. I can reduce the schedule to show just my son's school work, or add one or two or all other calendars to avoid conflicts. I love it!

The picture above is smaller than actual size, but it gives you the idea. Here is the actual size on my screen, showing you part of my week:

It's not perfect; I've left stuff out (Art...) and have not entered specific assignments in all subjects, which causes them to not show up on the "To Do" list, but I know how to fix that when I can take the time.

When I open my page to my HomeSchool Office, the current day is always highlighted in orange (see above), and the school assignments show in a list down the right side of the calendar in a specific "To Do" list. I have it set up so I can see exactly, "Test on Module 6", or "Read history pages 85-92". It is wonderful! And if I want to give my son a head's up as to when the next Algebra test is, I look forward on the calendar and find it. It is working so well for me!

The student is also able to log in using their own ID. This gives each student their own assignment calendar and "To Do" list for the day. They are not able to change their grades -- the grades can only be entered from the teacher's log in page. I haven't been using this feature - only one student, and I won't go into other reasons. (Another ::sigh::)

I had a bumpy time getting started with this program, because I needed that quiet day to wrap my brain around it all. Now that I am up and running, I am totally loving it. This is a program that I will seriously consider continuing to use until my son graduates high school in another three years. I have really needed HomeSchool Office, and I am so glad I have had the opportunity to try it out and get to know it.

So, guess what! You yourself can actually get HomeSchool Office to try out for free for 30 days! Now, I'm seriously warning you -- don't start the trial until you have the time to focus on this. It needs time and your brain, or you might hate it, and I don't want you to hate it. So consider it, and consider when you can try it, and then give it a go. I hope you like it!

HomeSchool Office was reviewed by other Crew members as well. To read other reviews of Lord Heritage's HomeSchool Office, click the button below.

School Planning

Since I haven't been posting often, I thought I'd explain why. I have been trying to get my Daily Lesson Planner ready for JD's 7th Grade year.

I home school using Charlotte Mason and Ambleside Online. With part of my brain I totally agree with CM philosophies, but I've never been able to fully implement her methodology. When Charlotte was alive, children did not have television, computer, Legos, movies, etc. My ...principal (of our homeschool)... has never chosen to eliminate television from our lives. As a matter of fact, our life was upgrade from antenna to satelite this week (for the first time in my son's life he has more than five channels). So more than ever there is, in his brain, this desire to work as little as possible to just finish in the hopes of getting to his electronic toys. And I admit that over the summer he has had more electronics than we intend to permit him to have during the "normal" upcoming days. ("Normal" as differentiated from unusual days, such as my upcoming medical procedure day...)

So I fully anticipate quite a culture shock as we start school next week. JD is 12, and I have already begun to hear comments from him that are fairly typical of a child who has been allowed to be too autonomous, and who sees the upcoming day when his freedoms will again be taken away. (Example: "Fine! Schedule [...me to do that activity]... You already run any minute of my life anyway! I don't get to decide anything I do!" Which is so completely untrue right now, but will be much more true as the school year starts.) 

My son would not be best served, in my opinion, by an unschooling philosophy. His choices would not be self-challenging to cause him to learn and grow. He prefers to make lazy choices. And I don't have adequate support in this family to make Charlotte Mason changes, such as eliminating twaddle, so when he "reads" on his own time he does not choose Swallows and Amazons or Tom Sawyer, he chooses Garfield.

My state requires regular diligent instruction in eight subject areas: Math, Science, Language Arts, Social Studies, Art, Music, Physical Education, and Health. My umbrella requires I document our instruction in Bible. Charlotte Mason suggests studies include Latin and one additional foreign language (she suggests French, but we're going with Spanish), as well as nature study (science), artist study (art), composer study (music), hymn study (music), folk music studies (music), narrations (writing), geography, time lines, and lots of outdoor time. My brain wants to do The Art of Argument.  I'm beginning to believe I cannot possibly do it all. But I am planning to give it a try.

My hopes for this upcoming year (7th Grade) include:

• ·         Bible – Apologia: Who is My Neighbor;

• Apologia General Science (daily);
• Nature Study: Homeschool Legacy: Birds of a Feather (four weeks);
• Unit Study: Box of Ideas: SALT
• Fun supplemental activities on ZooWhiz;
• Ambleside Online Science (not sure if we'll do these in addition to Apologia...)

 

• Horizon's Pre-Algebra (daily);
• Supplementing with Math911
• Supplementing with Math Essentials Pre-Algebra

 

Foreign Languages:

• First Form Latin (daily);
• Spanish I (daily);

 

Language Arts:

• Vocabulary: Vocab Videos;
• Spelling: words from Vocab Videos
• Writing: Susan Wise Bauer's Writing With Skill when he doesn't have a writing assignment with Lightning Lit;
• Writing and Lit: Lightning Literature and Composition (almost daily);
• Literature: Ambleside Online Literature and "free reading" (daily or almost daily)
• Grammar from BJU 7th Grade English (almost daily) (skipping non-grammar assignments)
• The Art of Argument (almost daily);

Social Studies:

• Ambleside Online History readings (almost daily) with time lining;
• Ambleside Online Geography readings (weekly) with map work;

Music:

• Ambleside Online composers, including biographical work; notebooking; mapwork; listening to music;
• Ambleside Online hymn studies;
• Ambleside Online folk songs.

Art:

• Ambleside Online artist study, including biographical work; notebooking; mapwork; looking at artwork; learning similar art techniques, with assistance from Harmony Arts 7^th Grade Art curriculum using Artistic Pursuits Jr. High Book 1;

Physical Education

• Family Time Fitness

Health

• A Beka A Healthier You

Scheduling

I read an email today about scheduling, and suddenly felt a blog post coming on.

Scheduling. At times it is the only way to survive! It can be your servant, or you can become its slave.

The first form of "schedule" I ever used most people won't think of as a schedule. My first form of "schedule" was my daily lesson plan book. Yes, yes, it was a book. We may have owned a computer in 1991, but I don't think I was using it much, and I certainly wasn't using it for school. There was no internet. (Yes, that's right, there was none.) We could not have afforded ink, let alone paper. The paper in the printer was thin, connected, and fed through the printer on the strips of paper on the edges that had holes that went through teeth that pulled the continuous feed... ::sigh:: That was a rabbit trail. This is not a step down nostalgia lane; it is a blog about schedules...

Okay, I was so schedule-challenged when I started homeschooling that I wasn't even using a calendar. It was hard to make it to pediatrician appointments, dentist appointments, etc. because when I tried to use a calendar (write down an appointment), I wouldn't check the calendar daily, so it was pointless. I really had to grow up.

So my first schedule was my black book, probably the same ones used by the public school teacher's (not many publishers considered home schoolers a viable target market back then). So, I can't remember my first one (and don't want to dig it out), but it probably had the subjects down a column on the left, and the days of the week in a line across the top (or vice verse).

My first act of organization was to go through the entire book and put the date onto each day's row on each page. (I never had a calendar handy, and still didn't yet know "30 Days Has September" poem, so I made lots of mistakes, and don't start me on knowing which year is a leap year...)  The Daily Schedule now became my daily calendar. Everything went into it, starting of course with assignments, but I also noted here "La Leche League" meetings, any other type of activity.. It kept me on track. I can't remember now what type of activities we were doing, but there was a monthly home school support group in an evening, things like park days, roller skating days, spelling bees, free days at the zoo, etc. When I first started out, I missed out on a lot of opportunities just because I didn't note them or remember them. I had to learn to just do it.

I used one lesson planner or another for many years. First it was one I got from a friend. Then it was one I bought from a company in Pennsylvania that advertised a "jelly-proof cover" (Ferg N Us). Then it was a notebook from an umbrella group that provided daily lesson plan pages similar to the ones in the Gregg Harris Homeschool Organizer. But all these homeschool planning methods had one drawback: when my plans changed I had to white-out and write over. And when they changed again, I had to white-out and write over. And the ink wouldn't even stick to the white-out; and the white-out would crack and chip and peel.

Then I learned about Homeschool Tracker. It was free. I downloaded it, looked at it, liked it. There was a premium edition that at that time cost only $25, and I had $25 available, so I bought it. But, unfortunately, I just never got the hang of it. Didn't spend the time learning how. Don't understand how to bump assignments; would get triplicates of the same assignment. Don't know how to print out my lesson plans week at a view. ::sigh:: Missed my old paper version, but not the white-out.

I finally got brave. I used to be a secretary. I know how to use Word.  So, I finally created my own 36-week-lesson planner template, and I've been using it (and sharing it) ever since. Maybe some day I'll get brave and take the time to learn how to use my Homeschool Tracker, I don't know. But in the mean time, I love creating my planner on the computer. I consider it a living document; I update it constantly based on what we actually did or didn't do. I usually have a complete printed copy, fairly up-to-date, by the end of the school year to put in the portfolio, but I could also just put a floppy disk with the file on it into the portfolio and call it good.

Keeping my calendar on my lesson planner soon began to dovetail with a general wall calendar kept in a central spot in the kitchen. This way Dad could also know when we had been to the doctor, dentist, eye doctor, or gone on a field trip, etc., and we could know when he knew he would be working late, had a church meeting in the evening and needed dinner promptly, etc.

I love a calendar that I first learned of from FlyLady from a company called More Time Moms out of Canada.  FlyLady recommended these for awhile, but then went to a similar calendar that she makes herself that is also good, but I just don't like it quite as much. It is all purple lined; the other one is black-lined but with color illustrations and free stickers. (I would link the FlyLady calendar, but I don't see it on her website. They must be out until the new ones come in for 2011-2012 -- they are 18 month calendars, as are the More Time Moms calendars.)

When my oldest got to an advanced level of homeschooling, an opportunity opened up to participate in a co-op.  My daughters would attend classes in various homes, at approximately the same time, in different locations, multiple times per week. Various moms then developed schedules to carry kids of up to four families each, so that each mom would only have to drive once a week.

A schedule-savvy (that is s-a-v-v-y) homeschool mom clued me in to how to make a schedule on a word document, with one column for each of us. This became my lifeline, once I had created it. I learned to allow for things I had previously not allowed for, like the amount of time it takes to drive from my house to where I am going.  I just looked through my computer for those old schedules, but it looks like they are gone, gone, gone. Maybe on an old computer. If I come across them I'll try to post a sample.

So, through the process of learning to schedule, I purchased Managers of Their Homes by Terri Maxwell.  I worked my way through the book, did an effort to use that system, but still found my computer schedule to be much more friendly, although the book's ideas were helpful.

From daily schedule, I gradually progressed to realizing how desperately I needed, as well, to stay on top of our dinner schedule. To do this in a healthy way I really needed to learn to eat well on top of it. I found my answer in a year's subscription to Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely, combined with a membership to Weight Watcher's (which I desperately needed to the tune of 40-45 pounds, which I am still in the process of losing).  Now I am done with my year, have a full notebook of printouts of weekly soup ideas, weekly menu plan ideas (six days a week, but I manage to pull a 7th day together in my plan each week).

And just today I learned of another free tool on a website new to me, "Say Mmmm", that has a place to plot out your menu plan, create your shopping list from your menu plan, print both out -- I've been doing all this manually for a year! I'm so glad to have found them!

Well, I don't know why but Blogger is having trouble saving my draft at this point on this blog entry, so I guess I had better post it before I lose all my work. Ahh! I wasn't logged in! That explains it!  Well, anyway...

Hope you have found these ideas helpful!

FlyMama Di