I posted last week that I was working on re-organizing the classroom to get a jump on January for the boys when Matt over at the Homeschool Day Book gave me a tip on his new to me product – the Homeschool Day Book.
I have struggled with a concrete system for keeping the boys on track. I like the workboxes idea – and we have a loose system of that – however, I never seem to have the time or need to fill their box each day – or print a list each day of what they are to do. So many times it comes down to a verbal – do the next page.
In Oregon, we are not required to keep track of hours or topics provided – however, I have felt the need to keep track of what we are doing – as practice for being a teacher – and as a back up if the law changes, or we move out of state with my husband’s job.
With this in mind – I’ve also felt the need to keep track of our learning resources – they seem to validate what we do. So much time spent in Saxon means the boys are good at math right? So many hours spent reading means that we are that great homeschool family right? I’m hoping a few of you are shaking your head no . . . . But there is still this weird desire to keep track. Like some sort of record keeping validation. Weird.
I started with the Homeschool Tracker. It is a huge intense program jam packed with so many data bases that it takes an afternoon to get started on it. It focuses on Lists of Resources, and Assignments. You can copy an assignment out, and have it span over weeks or months. With the paid version you can import lesson plans, print out transcripts, basically – you can be a record keeping diva.
BUT – we don’t have the same day every day. I would spend time inputting what I thought our week would look like – and then the lesson numbers would be off, ahead or behind, and I’d have an hour of “teacher homework” changing everything. I had quite a few years inputted when my system crashed and I lost the database. . . .That was heartbreaking.
It was also eye opening. Why had I been keeping all of those records? Who was I keeping them for? How often do you look back at your elementary school transcripts?
This past year, I haven’t really tracked the day to day learning at all. I havn’t had the time or desire to re-input all of the Homeschool Tracker information to make it work. I have tried a couple of downloaded planners – like This Old Schoolhouse Planner . It has just about every form imaginable to plan out the year – plan out the month, plan for anything and everything you never even thought of planning out. A read through of the planner will definitely make you confident that you have thought of everything related to the family and the home. But – I’m not a big on paper kind of gal. I LOVE LOVEA LOVALOT the lists. Love lists. But once written out – I don’t tend to ever read them again. I don’t want to hand write out what we might do every day. So the day to day part of the planner didn’t help me with the curriculum. I do love the TV planner, Menu Planner, and the control journal parts of it to know my home is in shape and prepared. But day to day? I’m too lazy.
So – after I had spent all day entering resources into the Resource an Subject Lists of Homeschool Tracker – and posted about the boys hitting me with Nerf Guns while planning – Matt pipes up and thinks that maybe I’m the kind of gal that would like his product – it might be easier to manage between dart battles.
Let me tell ya – He Was Right!
+Angie Wright
