P is for Planner: My favorite homeschool planner {Favorites Series}
I’m combining my Favorite Anything Series post with my Alphabet Blogging post this week. P is for Planner: My favorite homeschool planner. It is possible you already
It really is much more than a lesson planner as I can track time spent (or sessions), assign grades, keep a reading log, keep a resource log, journal, create report cards, and generate a transcript. I’m still using the Plus version which I purchased in 2005.
It doesn’t look the same now as it did then as the amazing husband and wife team of TgHomesoft did many upgrades and updates over the year (for free!!! I paid ONE price and every upgrade and update to the program was free!!). They do still offer HST Basic (not my cup of tea) and they now offer subscription based program HST Online. I have not bothered to even look at HST Online because I am still so in love with HST Plus.
There are so many features and options that HST Plus can be overwhelming. I don’t use the teacher journal or the memorization tab. Sometimes I use the reading log but I haven’t for awhile. There’s a chore option and an agenda option as well. I don’t use them either.
I do use the Teacher Planner and the Weekly Planner. I find that some things work better for me in the Teacher Planner and some things work better for me when I use the Weekly Planner. I have Second Form Latin planned out in the Teacher Planner section but I have Russian and German from Mango Languages set up under the Weekly Planner.
Teacher Plans are undated and can be used over and over again. So those Art of Argument Lesson plans created for BooBear are available for Tailorbear. Weekly Planner items are also undated and you can use the Use As New feature to copy those to another student. When I set up Mango Languages for Turtlegirl, I could then just Us As New and set up a weekly planner Mango Language item for Tailorbear. Sometimes I just enter lessons directly into the student assignment grid. I only do that if it’s not something I need to plan out long term or that I don’t plan to use again.
There is so much more to this program than I am able to talk about in one post. There are all the options for reports including different options for a transcript. I was so grateful that I had been using Homeschool Tracker Plus and could pull together a transcript of one style of BooBear for her college applications and then pull together different styles for some scholarship applications.
I don’t believe in giving grades per se to younger students so I didn’t really use the grading features until junior high and even then not to all the courses. When the girls started high school, I began to make use of different grading scales and weighted grading options so that I have grades for transcripts.
Do you have a favorite homeschool planner? Which one? Leave me a comment to share your favorite homeschool planner. Have a blog post about your favorite book, actor, hymn, Bible verse or anything that is your favorite? Then come link up. Be sure and visit the other blogs linked up to see what their favorite thing is this week.
Rules for linking up:
- Post must talk about something that is your favorite. It doesn’t have to be the same topic as my favorite post this week but it must be about something that is your favorite.
- Please include a link back to my blog. You are welcome to grab the button from the sidebar to include in your post.
I’ll be linking this post up to 52 Weeks Series Blog Hop.
Check out this week’s letter!
My favorite homeschool planner is just writing everything down in one of those teacher notebooks. I have tried HST but that was many years ago. One of these days I just might try it again. Your post makes me want to give it another shot =)
ReplyDeleteI use the Homeschool Tracker too and I LOVE it. I can't imagine keeping school organized at all without it.
ReplyDeleteI love HST+, too. We do have to issue grades for the boys as we are in a correspondence school, so it makes it easy to pull them. SO much to this program that I've not even learned and I've had it for almost 7 years!
ReplyDeleteI've heard of lots of folks that like HST. I have problems spending that much time getting everything entered, especially knowing how often our plans change. LOL I do tend towards the digital plans better than the paper ones though, and am feeling productive with my new editorial calendar plugin for my blog. Maybe I need to reconsider. :) Thanks for posting, and for linking up with 52 Weeks series!
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