Lesson Tracker: My favorite homeschool record keepiing system

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I can't remember exactly why I went looking for a record keeping app, but last year I downloaded this great little iOS app called Lesson Tracker.  Incredibly, this useful app costs only $2.  It is the best homeschool record keeping system I have tried.  I have it on my iTouch, so it is easy to use without having to open up my laptop.  I used it for several months last year and am going to use it again this year and hopefully keep up with it for the whole year.  The fact that I used it for more than one consecutive week is pretty much a miracle for me. 

This is how it works:  You set up your school year, your students, subjects, and sub-subjects.  And then you track what your kids do and how long they spend doing it.  (I estimate time--I do not time them exactly).  It is especially useful if you don't make highly specific lesson plans, but could be used by someone who does as well.  

For instance, if I do spelling with Bee, I tap the plus symbol to add an entry.  I then select Language Arts, and then All About Spelling.  I tap on the date (usually the same day I would be doing the entry) and choose the amount of time (for that, usually 15 or 30 minutes). There is a section for notes, and I can jot down the level and step we are in if I choose to do so.  There is also a field for a score, which is also optional.  I do not use this at this time but might want to use it for the high school years. 

The app can create reports and send them to you.  The reports include all the information entered, including any notes you include.  You can choose the amount of time that you would like your report to cover.  The app gets backed up when you sync to iTunes, but it seems to me a good idea to send yourself a report once a month. 

One thing I did not like about this app initially was that you have to select the amount of time your child spent on each activity.  I didn't think that this would be useful to me; I just wanted to write in what they did.  However, I found that putting in a time for each activity (even if it was just a rough estimate) was very helpful for me and showed me that my children spend far more time engaged in educational pursuits (planned or not planned) than I had imagined. 

Another thing I did not like about the app initially was that you could only select one child.  So, if I took both children to swim team, which counted for part of their PE, I had to make two separate entries.   But they fixed that with the most recent update, which is awesome!  There are many things that they do together, so that update is a huge timesaver for me. 

I put in all sorts of things that our family does.  I generally put in an hour each day (including weekends) for reading, which is actually a very low estimate.  Any family trip to a museum, zoo, cultural or historical attraction can go in.  Documentaries can go in.  Piano lessons and music practice go in.  The Spanish and classical music time that goes on in the car goes in.  All the hours of running around at the park are PE.

When we move to Georgia, we are supposed to keep an attendance record "on file" in our home, and I feel like these reports will be really useful for those purposes.  We are to have at least 180 days of school, consisting of 4.5 hours per day.  Even though I'll probably never have to show that to anyone, it's nice to know that I can account for the hours.

However, I feel like I'd want to keep using Lesson Tracker even if we were staying in Virginia because it just makes me feel much more productive.  Sometimes I feel like we don't do enough, but when I put the hours into the app, I can see that we are doing a good job after all.  All of those hours add up! 

Thank you to the app's creators, for making such a useful and affordable homeschool app!