Our Worm Bin: An Update

I had a comment asking for an update on our worm bin.  We got a Worm Factory about three months ago and stocked it with 500 red wriggler worms.  We are not squeamish and keep it in oun den, next to a love seat.  I had a homemade bin in the past, so was not new to raising worms. 

The bin is doing great.  There are lots of worms of different sizes, so I assume they are reproducing well.  I added the second tray on a couple of weeks ago, and many of my worms have already moved up there.  My youngest child enjoys feeding his banana peels and apple cores to the worms.  I am putting more and more of our kitchen scraps in there, and I think eventually it will be able to absorb the majority of them.  Some kitchen waste will still need to go in the outdoor bin, such as garlic, onion, and citrus pellings.  I tear up lots of cereal box-type cardboard for the bedding.

There are structured "worm activities" out there, but I haven't looked into doing them. The children just know the worms exist, they eat are garbage, and produce castings that we can use in the garden.  Worms are a fun addition to any homeschool (or home). 

Homeschool Day Book: A Review

Record keeping is not my strong suit.  As I've written before, I've been experimenting with Evernote to keep of a monthly list of our activities.  However, I was not completely satisfied with it because it took time to get the table formatted, and it couldn't be easily separated out into other types of reports.

Our school year "officially" started on Tuesday, and Monday night I stayed up getting things organized and planned for the week.  I decided to take a new look at homeschool record keeping software and printable planning pages.  

I came across a number of options, most of which I did not like. The programs I looked at had features that were not relevent to my family, such as grades and detailed lesson plans.  I am sure that these types of programs are invaluable to parents who make detailed plans well in advance and want to keep track of grades.  I looked at paper planners, but I was able neither to find or make something that looked like it would be easy to work in the moment and convenient to look back on at the end of the year. 

Then I came upon Homeschool Day Book.  I downloaded the free trial.   I think it's a keeper.  I like it much, much better than my own Evernote system, or any other system I've tried.  I've made a daily checklist to keep on a clipboard to check off through the day what the children do, and then I can quickly enter it into Homeschool Day Book at the end of the day, week, or month (yikes, hopefully not a whole month at once). 

Here are the pros for Homeschool Day Book:

• It is extremely intuitive to use.  It didn't hurt my brain to figure out how to use it.   A person with basic computer literacy will figure out how to use all the features of the program within 5-10 minutes. 
• It is easily customizable.  You can enter your own subjects and categories how you like. 
• If you enter an activity for the day, then it automatically updates your "attendance" record, marking that child as present for the day.  
• When you enter an activity, you can enter it for one or more children at the same time AND one or more subjects at the same time.  This is awesome, because we have so much overlap.  
• To create a report, you select the time period that you want, select the child or children, and select all subjects or one particular subject. 
• At first, I was sad that there was not a "book list" or "field trip" option because I wanted to keep track of  books I read outloud to the kids and print that out separately.  Then I realized that I can just call them subjects, so that I can print out separate reports for them.  Each time we finish a book, or go on a field trip, I can check that field.
• You can also keep track of how much time is spent on a particular activity/subject, but I'm not interested in that.  It would be useful for states where parents are required to log the hours children spend in "school."  

Here are the cons:

•  It's pretty bare bones with few frills. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also means that there just aren't that many features to figure out.  
•  I am not crazy about the way the reports look.  If you create a report for both your kids, for instance, it doesn't indicade which kid particpated in which activity, nor does it indicate the subjects that you checked.  You can print out reports by kid and by subject, however.  Also, there is a lot of white space that shows up if you create the report with description.  

Overall, this program is fun and easy to use, very customizable, ideal for relaxed, eclectic, and/or unsnchoolers.  I think it would be invaluable to someone who needs to keep track of how much time their children are spending on "school" to meet state requirements.  It's definitely more fun, faster, and convenient to enter data into the program than it was to enter it into a homemade table or spreadsheet.  It costs $39, which is not cheap, but it is comparable or less than similar programs.  If I have the time, I will use the reports to create my own, prettier reports of our homeschool.  If I don't have time, the reports generated by Homeschool Day Book will suffice, printed by child and by subject.

I'm happy about this convenient way to keep track of what we do.  Like I always say, the children learn the same whether or not I write down what they do, but it certainly gives me a feeling of satisfaction to be able to look back and see all that they accomplished. 

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Homeschool Day Book in exchange for writing a review (positive or negative) on my blog.