Homeschool Tracker Online

I was a little uncertain about writing a review for this software because I am prone to changing my mind. I have now been using it for one complete term, so even if I do decide that I don't like it anymore, this information might help someone out there.

I must admit that learning it was very frustrating for me. I almost gave up. It would have been so helpful to have someone standing over my shoulder giving me tips on how to use it.  Now that I have figured it out, I think it is worth the effort that I put into learning it.  I made lots of mistakes and unnecessary input of data. I am glad that I decided to learn it over our summer break otherwise I would not have stuck with it.

It is true that you can use it in multiple ways depending on how you tend to plan, and weather or not you stick with your plans.  I, for one, tend to switch constantly between resources so, I think that I probably use it differently than many people.

The thing I like best is the end of the term "Scope and Sequence" Report I was able to print.  I input everything into the in one of 8 categories/subjects

Bible
Math
Language Arts
History & Geography
Science & Nature Study
Fine Arts
Foreign Languages
Life Skills & Exercise

I use multiple resources for each subject.

When the report is printed It is divided by subjects, then further by resources listed by date order with a description of what we did. The description comes from the "Topic" field, so I try to put as much information in this field as I can.

This is the best organized year I've ever had. This is my 15th year homeschooling and I have always considered myself a failure when it comes to record keeping.  This year I have a neat little report which I am able to print at any point in time and lets me know at a glance all that we have accomplished.

I admit that it takes me about 30-40 minutes to schedule everything each week,  and about 15 minutes daily to add more details and corrections to what we did that day. This is not counting the hours it takes to input all the plans.  I would say that once you know what you are doing, it will probably take you about 8 hrs or so to get everything just the way you want it.  I spent this week inputting everything for term two, and I'm guessing that this is how much time it took me spread over several days. Now all I have to do each week is schedule my plans which like I said takes me 30-40 minutes each week.  You could schedule the whole year, but that is definitely not for me. I've learned my lesson.

I almost forgot to say something very important.  I do not consider all this record keeping necessary especially at my kids current age, and especially not in Texas.  However, because I know myself, I feel that I need to practice while they are still little. I need to figure out now what I will use when they get into the High School Years.  I was pretty unorganized with my oldest two. When I was getting them ready to start college, I was completely stressed over how unorganized I was, and I constantly worried about what the colleges were going to require of us as far as paper work.  Fortunately they did not require anything but a Transcript and SAT scores. Things are constantly changing, and I don't know what will be required of my youngest three. I plan to be ready and not to go through all that stress again.