Organize Your HomeSchool Office Online : a Homeschool Review
If you’re looking for something to help you schedule and organize your homeschool days you’ll want to read this review of HomeSchool Office by Lord Heritage an online hub for organizing and planning your homeschool days.
One of the biggest things I worry about in homeschooling (besides is my child learning) is keeping organized and having good records. The boxed curriculum we use sends a nice planned out schedule encompassing 181 days but since we do a bit of tweaking (with their blessing) I’m always open to new ideas that make keeping track and having accurate records a snap.
I thought I might give it a go with HomeSchool Office and see if they could help me view the big picture of what our homeschool year looks like (something I’ve been neglecting to do).
Since our daughter is getting older and our days a bit busier I know I need to have a better idea of what our months and school year look like.
HomeSchool Office is a Christian company that uses the scriptures behind it’s organizational method.
POWER
P: Plan (Jeremiah 12:11)
O: Order (1 Corinthians 14:40)
W: Work (John 17:4)
E: Evaluate (Matthew 28:20)
R: Report (Romans 14:12)
HomeSchool Office is completely web based but you can print out reports for what you need to see in hand.
When you first log into HomeSchool Office there is a little box on your screen where you can send messages to other members of your homeschool team (you’ll find out about them in a minute).
I’m going to walk through the different sections for HomeSchool Office now. There is a lot there and my details are the program in a nutshell. A nutshell that has not been fully cracked.
Team Section
Next you enter in all the data for your particular homeschool “Team Section“. From your homeschool name to the district you live, the educators involved in your school, your students (kids), and any friends also connected to your homeschool..
Then you start to “plan” your child’s school year. In this section you enter their name, age, grade level, and each of their subjects for the school year. There is a lot of information you can enter under this tab but I chose not too. You can enter goals for the year, the resources used in each subject and how much of the grade is determined by the subject you are currently editing. This was a lot of information for me to enter, especially mid-year when things were already in play so in the interest of getting to this program I skipped the weighting and adding each assignment.
Plan Section
After that, still under the Plan Section, there is a “School Year Plan” tab where you can see how many days your child will be in homeschool. This is is good if you need to “do school” so and so many days per your state homeschool laws. I would have liked if clicking on the days would pop up a schedule of the day but that doesn’t appear to happen in the program. Clicking them also doesn’t alter them to show that the day has been done.
Then comes a Master Schedule Tab where you see your school day at a glance. I believe this shows your schedule and what your days will look like. Again I would have liked to check off the day or subject being done here. It does pop a little window with more details of the subject though.
Does your homeschool include any Projects Tab? You can add those in the next tab.
And finally there is also a Budget Tab where you can put how much your homeschool budget is for each section such as books, membership, curriculum, music, etc.
Order Section
There is a section called Order where you can see your calendar in monthly form, weekly, and daily, and daily list form. Here (finally) you can click on the subject for the day and check off whether it was completed, if you had to push it to a later time or skip it all together. You can also add notes to each subject and print your schedule.
Evaluate
In the Evaluate Section you can enter grades and attendance and finally print out a report of it all (including a High School Transcript) in the Reports Section.
My Thoughts
So I like organizing products. And HomeSchool Office is very detailed in the information it collects from you. But it was almost too much for me at many points and I found myself wanting to give up several times. I think this is due to two factors….
1.) My daughter is in the fourth grade so I’m not quite ready for a high school transcript and keeping track of credit hours.
2.) We started reviewing this product in the middle of our school year. I think starting it in the beginning when all the planning is going on and I have the free time to add in all these details would have been better.
There is some really good stuff in HomeSchool Office but getting it all dialed in takes some serious time, at least for our homeschool. If I want to get the most out of HomeSchool Office it’s best to add in as much detail as I can. Every homeschool day we do something different in each subject. In HomeSchool Office I could type that all in but that’s 7 subjects x 181 days. That’s typing in 1267 different details and that’s just school subjects. This doesn’t include the student information, budgeting, subject weighting and resources. So even though it might have been nice to add in each day’s details I just chose to add in the different subjects.
Some things that I did like…
For me the sections I got the most out of were the Plan and Order sections. But I almost felt that they could be merged.
I liked that HSO keeps track of attendance for you.
While I felt that at this time this program was really overwhelming in all it’s detail we were given a year’s subscription so my plan is to start it up again at the beginning of our 2015-16 homeschool year. I can see some ways in which this might work for me.
There is an HSO Program Manual to walk you through all the steps and make sure you get the most out of the program. Due to the level of detail in the program I still need more clarification for some items so the manual could be a little longer and more detailed.
I think that HomeSchool Office would be a great program for a detailed oriented person who likes a digital planner that helps them keep detailed records of their homeschool days. And also it would make a good product if your homeschooler is in highschool.
Want to give it a try yourself? HomeSchool Office provides a 30 day trial .
HomeSchool Office is $79 now FREE.
This review is nicely done, Kemi 🙂
Thank you Wendy 😉