'Tis summer break, a time for homeschoolers to prepare for the next year. For me, that means updating Homeschoolskedtrack to the next school year and inputting courses and assignments for 4 kiddos. Quite a chore! It's a bit of work in the beginning, but it certainly makes my school year go much smoother than it would if I weren't the least bit prepared. Read more about my love for homeschoolskedtrack.com here and here.
I was recently contacted by a reader for some help with the system. (So, so, sorry for the delay!) I remember when I started out, how difficult it was to figure it all out. After some time, it started to make sense. It was a lot of trial and error the first year for sure! So, I decided to do a series of postings to help YOU get started. This site is helpful for those are strict, by-the-schedule planners as well as those of us that play it day it by day, but still need to know what to do when the time comes. I truly believe this site can work for anyone. While the option of doing report cards exists, it's not required. You could use it to keep track of every book you use through the school year, or you could skip that part. What it does do, that everyone benefits from, is lay out for the student what to do on a daily basis.
Maybe you've gotten some of this figured out, maybe you haven't. I'm going to start with the beginning- setting up your school details and I plan to go all the way through printing a report card, though that may come later in the year. So here we go....
Part 1: Getting to Know the Admin Tab
The first thing we need to do is set up our school, teacher and student details.
Click Admin tab.
1. Click School and update your school information.
2. Click Teacher and do the same
3. Click the Students tab and set up the profile of each of your students. Be sure to give them a login id and a password, if desired. This will allow your student to log into homeschoolskedtrack to see their assignements. This is great for building independence in your children and holding them accountable for assignments. I won't have my "third" grader doing that this year, I might start him in the middle of the year, but definitely in "grade 4".
Tip: Once you've added your child, you can click the "more details" link and input a lot more information if you wish. This isn't required and isn't something I do.
4. Now set up your school year. Click "new" on the lower right.
On this page you choose your school year start and end dates. What days of the week will you have school? Do you have a required number of days? This is required by the system and the default is 180. My state does not require a set number of days so I simply leave this at 180. The only thing it's going to affect is the report card attendance should I decide to print it.
Tip: Once you get a few years into the system, if you need to refer back to another year for something, come to this tab and set the prior year as active. You may need to log out and log back in again. Just remember to set it back to the current year when you're done.
5. Now for the enrollments tab. Here you will take each student you've entered and "enroll" them in the school year. This is something you'll do each school year. Here is where you specify their grade level and the scale on which you wish to grade assignments- Not graded, A+, A, A-.. or A, B, C... or E, S, NI.. or simply Pass/Fail. You also specify the minimum number of hours per day. Since my state has no requirements, I just use the suggested time frames. Do we meet those time frames? Not always, but that's why we homeschool, for flexibility.
The other tabs- Field Trips, Resources, and References- are not required so you can skip those if you'd like or add them if you want to keep track of things.
Once all of this is done for the new school year, you'll be ready for Part 2- Courses. Watch for in the upcoming days!