Back to Cozi for planning

With the New Year, I realized that we needed to change our system for keeping the family calendar.  With me in graduate school, an active volunteering life, 2 kids homeschooling, and the other in a final year of free range preschool, the system I had been happily using (paper planner/bullet journal) was about to break down.  The main issue was that I needed to enter a lot of repeated events (karate practice, zoom classes, etc), and the time it would take to enter everyone's activity into a paper calendar was not feasible. Not to mention the fact that the data would not be portable or easily transferrable to anyone else.  

I first tried Homeschool Planet (yet again).  This is the third time I have tried it, and I do not like it.  I also do not understand why it looks the same as it did several years ago.  I find it complicated and clunky, and every time I access it, it is more dated.  

I then decided that everything I need to do (since I do not track grades), I could do in Cozi, which I had used years ago.  I put everyone's scheduled activities into it.  I also put in all chores and assignments as all day events.  All of us have the app on our phone.  Each boy's individual agenda is also printed, and I put them on the refrigerator with magnet clips.  

Here is what I like about this system:  

• My husband and I and each boy can be clear on our expectations, eliminating a lot of the fuzziness that was so bothersome to Bug. 
• I can punch holes in the agendas when the week is over, and I actually have a record of what they did!  I can also jot things down (documentaries they
  watched, etc) that were not assigned.  This is good protection for me in the extremely unlikely scenario that we would be accused of educational neglect.  Of course, in that scenario, I am also pretty sure that 5 minutes of a social worker chatting with my kids about any academic subject would do the trick as well.  
• We can all access the calendar from our phones.  
• I can use the reminder function.  
• It's easy to input events, to make them repeat, and to change them.  

What I don't like:  

• I feel like the to-do function could be improved.  I would like to input their chores and repeating assignments as to-do items rather than all-day events.  
• There is so much on the calendar that the monthly view isn't usable.  
• I liked my simple, low-tech paper system.  It was calming.  But 5 people with irregular schedules is too much for me to keep up with using a low tech system.  

Record Keeping for the Relaxed Homeschool

UPDATE AS OF 7-14:  I used this system briefly, then switched The Ultimate Homeschool Planner by Debra Bell for the school year.  It's working for me! 

I go off and on about record keeping.  Mostly off.  I am consistent about keeping the children's yearly standardized test scores (required only every 3 years), copy of our yearly declaration of intent to homeschool, and progress reports.  We are required to keep yearly progress reports on file--I find it much easier to keep these by semester.  Semester 1 is Jul 1 - Dec 31 and Semester 2 is Jan 1 - Jun 30.

But I have found it difficult to consistently keep records on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis.  I have also found that many homeschoolers seem to take pride in only keeping the absolute minimum of records required by the state.  This I do not understand.  As I see it, a family tragedy (such as an illness or my death) could send our children back to school.  Records could only be helpful in this transition.  Additionally, colleges and universities vary greatly in their requirements.  Bee has only one more year until he is in high school (!), and I want to make it easy on myself in creating a high school transcript.  And there is always the possibility of being investigated for education neglect.  What incredibly unlikely, I have always felt that decent records (particularly a standardized test) would shut that sort of thing down very quickly.

It's often recommended that homeschoolers keep some kind of attendance record.  It's always hard for me to know--do I count a day as a quarter day, a half day, a full day?  Should I count weekends?  So much of my children's education comes naturally through life that it's really hard to say what is school and what is not.  But I think having some kind of written record of what was done is a great idea. 

At times, I have kept daily records on paper or in an app on my phone.  The app I have used (Lesson Tracker) was the most successful, and the best thing about it was that it showed me how much my children actually do, both as part of their "school" and on their own.  However, it requires you to enter the amount of time your child spends on the subject each day, and sometimes I just felt a little bogged down by it.

Lately, I've been using a new system (for attendance and daily records).  I made a table on Google docs (not the best application for making a table, but I managed).  It has each of the kids names and a place to check off all the subjects they do each day.  And a small area for notes to me jot down things.  Below, I have included a picture both of the blank table and of a sample for a very laid back few days like we've been having lately.

I had to use abbreviations for the subjects.  They are pretty obvious, but they stand for Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies, Spanish, Arts (Music, Art, & Theater), Physical Education, and Home Economics.  I have the Home Economics on there because occasionally, we have to take a day off and do nothing but clean house (like if company is coming), and so checking that box off is a way of reminding myself that those skills are extremely valuable.  I don't use it for the kids' daily/weekly chores though.

Next year, I will probably need to make a separate table for Bee and Bug, because Bee's subjects will need to be more specific and correspond to what will go on his transcript.

For now, I am really feeling good about checking off the subjects every day and having a visual reminder that my children are learning and developing in all sorts of ways, often without my promptings. 

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! 

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. 

Record Keeping: Simple Portfolios and Scrapbooks

One thing I've done for the past two years is put much of Bee's work in a 3-ring binder, for each school year.  I have it divided into three categories:  Math, Language, and Other.  For his first grade year, I put nearly all of his written work in there because we just didn't do a ton of written work.  For his second grade year, I've put all of his writing samples and the weekly math page that we did, but I had to thin out and just use what I thought were the best/most interesting/most representative samples.

I'm also making a binder of the work that Bug brought home from preschool (drawings, letter and number tracing, Montessori metal insets, etc.).  I put little projects he's done around the house as well.  His stuff is kind of scattered, so I'm gradually collecting it.  Since he'll be only homeschooling next year, I'll start a new binder for him.

I'm going to a "crop" this weekend.  For those who don't know, that's where a bunch of scrapbookers get together in a big room and work on projects.  I'm hoping to make simple 8.5 x 11 pages of the field trips that Bee (and Bug to a lesser extent) went on the past two years.  I will then make a copy of them.  The originals will go in a special family homeschool scrapbook.  The copies will go in their binders for the year that they occurred.

I keep photo pages, certificates, and the most special projects in plastic sheet protectors in the notebok.  The protectors are especially good for little booklets.  Many pages just get 3-hole-punched and stuck in the binder.  I am probably saving too many things, but at least they are neatly put away in a binder, rather than scattered throughout the house. 

I start the school year the in June before the real school year starts.  So, most everything that happens in the summer before the school year goes in the binder for the upcoming school year.   Other families might find it makes more sense to start in the fall.  Or those who eschew the concept of the traditional school year might start in January.  And there's no rule that these binders need to be "one-year" binders.  Families who are better at throwing things out might have a binder that spans several years. 

This portfolio/scrapbook could also easily be put together by non-homeschooling parents who want to save momentos and work from each school year. 

List of Items I include (or plant to include) in portfolios: 

• Photos of museums and cultural attractions we visited (we went many places locally, and Bee and his dad travelled to both NYC and DC this year!)
• Photos of fun days (like when we went to theme parks during school hours)
• Photos of them and their homeschool friends at park days
• Photos of  extracurricular activities
• Writing samples:  I treasure these; it is so special to look back on what children thought was interesting to write about.  I love to keep the scraps of paper I find lying around the house with things that they spontaneously created. 
• Interesting workbook pages
• Art work (larger pieces can be photographed, and the photograph included)
• Projects made at camps and classes
• Certificates/ribbons given upon completion of a program or winning a prize
• Brochures of Places we Visited
• This coming year, I hope to include in each binder a list of the things that we did each month, from my Evernote.  

They learn the same whether or not I keep records!  But it is nice for all of us to look back on what we've done to get a sense of accomplishment.  

Homeschool Record Keeping with Evernote

I am continuing to play around with Evernote.  I decided to use it to keep a list of the boy's activities.  We do a ton of stuff, but I forget everything we do.  Just because I didn't keep track of it doesn't mean we didn't do it, but I find it satisfying to look back and see all that we did.

The first year I homeschooled, I kept a list in paper planner of as much stuff related to education as possible.  I find it useful to start a new list each month.  Below is an example.  Our summer schedule is pretty laid back.  I know there are some things that I forgot to put on, and that's okay.  I can easily add to it as I remember things, such as looking at the dinosaur exhibit in the museum.  I won't update the table on this blog, because it's too dificult, though. 

Homeschool Record June 2012

Date	Bee	Bug	Activity	Description	Subject
various	X	X	Neighborhood Pool	Swimming!  Bug learned how to swim on his own.	P.E.
6/23	X	X	Fossil Hunting	Outing: Park rangers gave a talk on the climate and history of the area; the boys got to collect fossils and bring some home.	science
6/25-6/29	X		Camp	Dinosaur Camp at children's museum	science
6/25- 6/29		X	Camp	Animal Habitat Camp at children's museum	science
various	X	X	Gymnastics	The boys finished their gymnastics classes at each performed in the recital.	P.E.
various		X	Ballet	Bug finished up his ballet class and performed in the dance recital.	P.E., Fine Arts
various	X	X	Spanish	Review, music	Spanish
various	X		Math facts	Review	Math
various	X		German	Review	German
various	X		Spelling	Review	Language
various	X		Watership Down	listening to me read book	Language
various	X		Band of Brothers	finished listening to dad read book	Language

I think Evernote is going to be a good organizational tool for me. I'll post an example of my record keeping for the regular school year in a few months.