If It Ain't Written Down...It Ain't Happening

If I were giving a tour of our homeschool, I'd probably be sharing all the bargains I've found over the years--the free chalk board, the binding machine from ebay, etc.  This week's Blog Cruise subject is lesson planning and if I had to choose the one item that keeps our homeschool going it would be the record keeping software I paid full price for (and still consider a bargain).   I purchased Edu-Track when I learned we would be moving from Indiana to Missouri and I'd be switching from checking off days on a calendar to tracking hours, specifically:  1000 total hours with at least 600 in core subjects,  of which 400 hours must take place at the regular home school location.  Edu-Track was developed by a Missourian so  all this core/non-core gobbledy-gook is built into the software and all I have to do is check a box here and there.

I like to start off my school year having as much scheduling done as possible.  I've found if I don't have it written down I'll discover that we haven't cracked open the spelling book for two weeks.  This year, for the first time, I'm sharing host duties for our science experiments with another local homeschooling mom.  If  we don't keep to a rigorous reading schedule, we won't be ready for the experiment on those pre-determined days.   I may have to tweak dates as the year progresses but I know my 1000 hours (or at least the 600 core hours) are accounted for up front.  Edu-Track has a great recurring activity feature that makes data input easy.  If I know we're going to start each week watching the next lesson of Math-U-See  I fill in the Recpeating Activity Screen as follows.

Just like that I have 30 core hours scheduled.  I can repeat this step for Worksheets B-D on Tuesdays-Thursdays and schedule a test for Fridays.  One hundred fifty hours of math input in less than 5 minutes.  For other subjects, like science, I may put in a generic activity like "Read pp ____ in Land Animals of the Third Day" to set up the repeating activity and go in to manually enter the specific page numbers later.

At the beginning of each week I print out a schedule by subject. 

The paper leaves plenty of room for me to "edit."  If a crisis occurs and we don't our social studies done on Wednesday, I just draw an arrow to Thursday.  If someone calls to let us know about a great exhibit at the Science Center, I can write in the details of the field trip.  When the week is complete, I'll make any necessary changes to our Edu-Track records and print out an updated and accurate copy to keep in our record book.  The software allows me to bump individual and groups of activities forward and backward with just a few clicks of the mouse.  When Schnickelfritz gets to college I can use Edu-Track to create transcripts.  For now, I use other features to keep track of chores to be done, books read, field trips, even Fritz's immunizations.