My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping Review

Record keeping and planning is an essential part of homeschooling and also one of the most time consuming part of homeschooling. For the last several weeks I have been using  

My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping and their Annual Membership Plan.

My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping can be accessed not only by a computer, other devices, and smartphones.

Once you purchase your membership you can watch videos with navigating the site. I would recommend you watch the tutorial videos first. 

 

 Registration Wizard walking me through set up

Once I began working on adding my two students. I had some assistance with the Registration Wizard which helped me navigate the format. It let me input a start and end date with my school. From there you can add classes choosing the days of the week for each class. You can also put a time or not, and it generated how many lessons to schedule using a planning option or opt out of that feature. You can choose to have different classes start at different days. If you have co-op or outside classes start before you begin your official schedule that is a nice feature. Some outside classes you can't reschedule so you can have an option to have it not be able to get rescheduled. Other classes you can choose for them to get rescheduled if needed. I can also copy and paste between my students. You can even add in chores.

 You can also have your students to have separate log in access for them to see their schedule. It can be sent by email or my cell phone. They will need a separate email account. You can set it up with a QR Code. I didn’t use this feature as my kids prefer me to print out their schedules.

Some features include:

Homeroom:

 Two ways to access my kids data this shows me data in graphs

On the upper left side you see your students. You can click your individual students name on the left side. 

From there you will see what I call student data. It shows you the percentage of days completed, classes, attendance days and hours, events, awards, extra curricula activities, and standardized test scores. 

 This give me an overview of everything quickly of my student

If you don’t want to scroll down you can click on the tabs in the jump to section.

 

On the top right hand side of your Homeroom I can click on the drop down menu for other pages on my students. 

 Drop down menu

This allows me to see individual reports rather than viewing it as one huge data graph format. 

 I like the details on this attendance report from the Homeroom section

 

Calendar:

This is where my student’s school schedule, outside activities, appointments, field trips, and extra curricula activities, and reading list is located. You have the option to view your calendar daily, weekly, monthly, or as an agenda layout. 

 

If I just want to see appointments for the week I can click on it. That is a nice feature for me as my daughter’s special needs keeps our schedule busy with outside appointments. You can color code each student and even the events. I can view it with all my students or with individual students.

I can also save the calendar and print it out. I can have my calendar emailed daily or weekly in my inbox.

Planbook:

This is where you will get your homeschool organized. You input information to generate your schedule for your homeschool. You will also be able to view completed and incomplete assignments. You can add a grade or just mark the assignment as completed.

Reports:

 

An example of the Report Card

Within the reports you can view and print lesson plans, events, reading log list, transcripts, awards, extra-curricular, material-lesson plans, report cards, attendance, course description, instructional hours, material-reading list/log, and standardized test information.

Teacher Alert:

This is a neat feature as it lets me know if something needs to be done.  

How did I use My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping in my homeschool?

First off we received this when I wasn’t quite ready to fully plan my kid’s schedule. I had the curriculum and a general idea of what we are doing. I decided to plug in what I had. I was playing around with the schedule like we are in our school year. My son just started his first outside class this week.  I worked it daily or every other day like I normally would do.

I have always been more of a paper planner gal until the last two years someone introduced me to a easy online format that is easy for me to have a system that grades, generates GPA, creates report cards, transcripts and lets me print out my lesson plan. The layout isn’t the best but its super easy to use and I can drag assignments or quickly click to move. I love the price point on my current one as most homeschool planner programs are pricey for my budget.

As I was using My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping I had a few things I was comparing to the other program. The price point is very compatible to what I have been using the last two years. That is a big PLUS in my homeschool.

Next are the reports with My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping is amazing and looks so much more professional. I love the variety that they offer. This section is top notch in my book. My other program generates book list, schedule, report card, and transcripts. It also does attendance but is awful and I don’t use it. Basically I only print out the book list and schedule. I print out the report card quarterly but have to handwrite a date over the one that is there. The transcript I just copy onto another format as I don’t like theirs at all. My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping I would just have to print and I would be done. This is important to me having a middle school and high school student. Not to mention how much time this would save me!

 The schedule layout is amazing with the color coding of the kids.  I have only two but, this is nice!

I also like how you can color code the kids. I use a highlighter for my kids. I think the format is great for small and large families. Looking at an overall schedule with everyone is super simple.

I have some mixed feelings about certain areas when creating lesson plans. It just seems cumbersome compared to what I’m using. It’s has a lot of the same features but the layout  and steps just makes it seem like so much more. I felt it took me longer to fix mistakes and change dates. I opened both programs and kept clicking back and forth inputting the same information. My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping took a lot longer and was harder to fix mistakes.

The videos are great explaining everything but, I wanted it to be larger so my old eyes could see it better.

Sigh, I just really wanted this to work as it has some completely amazing features that make several online homschool planners look pretty lame. As you know I’ve reviewed several over the years. Then I’m trying to consider things like- is it because I’m just comfortable with what I have already? Maybe-but time is a valuable to me  and the input of the schedule just wasn’t working well for me.

My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping and their Annual Membership Plan should satisfy any states requirements regardless of its regulations. You have a lot of options to make it fit your family’s needs. Just because I have mixed feeling doesn’t mean it won’t work for your family. Honestly, it has some amazing features that I really love!

Social Media Links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MySchoolYearWeb
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MySchoolYear

There are 44 other reviewers who have been using My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping and their Annual Membership Plan the last few weeks. Go see what they have to say by clicking on the graphic below.