Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Evernote and Homeschooling: An Update

As it turns out, I'm increasingly finding Evernote to be a useful tool.  It's much more convenient than bookmarking a site.  It's nice that you don't have to worry about the site disappearing because you've saved the information on the Evernote.  All you do is highlight the information from a site that you want to save, click on the little Evernote button that gets added to your browser, and then tag the site.  I use tags such as homeschool, homeschool 2012-2013, Spanish vocabulary, science experiments, history, etc.  I learned today that you can nest your tags, so that pretty much all tags related to homeschooling are now a sub-tag of homeschooling. 

I always find cool crafts on the Internet, but then I have trouble finding them in my bookmarks.  Now, I have them saved in Evernote and categorized seasonally.  I'm making my plans for the year in Evernote.  I was making our weekly schedule in Open Office, but I may make that in Evernote too. 

As I wrote before, I'm also keeping a monthly record of our activities with a table in Evernote.  I admit that it's impossible to keep track of everything educational that the boys do, but it certainly does make me feel better to look back and see what we have done.  I tend to stay so focused in the present and the future that sometimes I look back on the blur that was my month and think, Did we do anything at all?  Jotting down what we did is really helpful to me.  The boys learn the same whether I write it down or not.
Although it's not directly related to homeschooling, I'm really happy with organizing recipes with Evernote.  I've even typed some in, and it's very convenient to me to just pull up the recipe on computer and consult it as needed.  If I get an iPod Touch, I'll be able to pull up the recipes right in the kitchen. 

I have my recipes tagged under both recipe, and under their main ingredients (which are now subtags of recipe.)  I'm planning to use Evernote to plan our monthly meals.  I am a big fan of freezer cooking.  I am lucky to be married to a man who enjoys cooking, so I only have to make four meals a week (Monday through Thursday).  That means I could cook 32 meals and have enough for 2 months! 

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