MySchoolYear.com has generously given me the use of their school planning product My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping for my 3 youngest students, David (11), Daniel (6) and Rebecca (3).

This is an online product where the teacher (me) goes into the interface and for each student enters their class information and assignments. A feature I really liked was that the program let me add my son’s email, and each day it will email him that day’s assignments. It will also email the teacher the assignments for the week.

You can easily set up classes for each student, then tell it to populate the classes for the entire school year, choosing which days you have the class. For example, we do Saxon math, one lesson per day, Monday through Thursday. I could tell the program to start lesson One on Monday, then populate the rest of the school year. Once you have done this for all the classes, your student’s schedule will be complete. For classes where you do not have specific lessons, but just times, you can do that as well. For example, you might use the Class Guitar and for the lessons say: Practice 15 minutes per day. Then set it for Monday through Friday. It will repeat automatically.

Of course, with homeschooling, one of the beautiful parts is that you can adjust your school schedule as life hits. This did not happen during the review phase, but this program is supposed to let you automatically reschedule or shift everything to mimic real life. This is a nice feature which makes it superior to the pencil and paper method, where shifting assignment numbers can be painful.

I also love the fact that once I set this up, it can be easily executed by a supervising parent/grandparent/big sister. With six children of all ages, I am often driving someone somewhere and the children may be getting supervised by grandparents or my husband. This program ensures they all know what is supposed to be done, even i am flying out the door. They can just pull up the email the program sent to them and keep moving forward.

I also like that it keeps track of the days they are in school. That is a requirement in my state. It also keeps track of grades for me. When I go to make a report card (if I choose to, or if your state requires it, all the data you need is there). In our town there are some free incentives for good grades and my children love to have a report card so they can participate.

As for my 3 year old, I have not made lesson plans yet for her, but this will be where I keep track of different fun things/poems/songs and basic life skills we are all working with her on completing.  This way, everyone in the family knows what she can do when she needs a little guidance.

I tried to use this product, and found that it was not as user- friendly as I hoped. I was looking for a product that was fairly intuitive. Instead, I found myself floundering around, struggling to figure out where I should do certain things.
For example, upon set-up, I accidentally put one son in at the wrong grade. Not a big deal, but I spent several minutes trying to figure out how to change it. I could not figure it out, so I called their help line, where I left a message. I never received a call back. For me, this was a bit of a disappointment.  However, even with that drawback, I will continue to use the product because it’s benefits outweigh the things I do not like.

I am thankful for the opportunity to review this. I’ll update again in several months once our school year is in full swing.
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