Tuesday Review

It's that time to review that something great that makes your hs work better. You can participate with angela here-http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/byourlove1.Here is mine.

How do you keep track of all the things you do with your homeschool? I use Homeschool Tracker Plus. I used to have the Basic version, which is free -http://www.homeschooltracker.com/, and I used it for a year. I then met a few great ladies that used the plus version and sold me on it. The plus version has lesson plans section and a few other things in it that the basic version does not. What I love about this program is that you don't need those consumable paper planners to write it all down. You could just keep track of it all right there. You choose and set up your own school yr.

What you have are the Main Menu, student, teacher, maintenance and reports. The main menu really just gives a at-a-glance view of your students days and time( you can choose not to keep time). The student has agenda, assignments, attendance, field trips, journal, memorization, overview and a reading log. The teacher section covers goals (set your own), journal, lesson plans, lesson plans schedule and a weekly planner. Maintenance covers all administration areas such as grades, resources, school info, students, subjects/courses and years/terms. Reports are just an area where you can print it all up in style.

The things I like about this program is I can put it all in there including our field trips and hours and reading. It really works for me and come high school I have a way to print out transcripts for my children. I can keep a journal too so If I don't have time to sort through some ideas I just put them there and sort them out later to make sense for homeschooling. It can drive you a bit nuts at times though if you get to worried about time spent and all like i did for a while. My kids have yet to use the agenda and such but I am working on that this yr. They also haven't used the journal portion and I will probably not make them, but I suppose it could be useful. The really great thing is having all my resources in one place and the books we have read there too. The list of books got quite long after just a short while so I really felt like we were doing alot and that was reassuring to me.

I liked the basic edition as well and it worked just fine so you can try that first before splurging on the plus edition. I would suggest this to anyone looking for something to keep all their homeschooling information.

Vanessa