sewpeaceful Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 I have been a devout Homeschool Tracker Plus user for 5 years. And for 5 years, I have had a lot of textbook style curriculum which has made planning inside HST+ a cakewalk. Now I have grown more ecletic, classical, CM... I have a beautifully written instructors guide for Elemental Science Biology that I just bought last night (whoo hoo!). I have to plan out SOTW1 when the stuff starts arriving tomorrow (again, whoo hoo!). Math, spelling/dictation, R&S grammar, etc would continue to be easy to schedule through HST+. But transferring over Elemental Science and entering everything for SOTW1... yikes. And before I continue, I should mention my kids like receiving an assignment sheet on Monday morning to get an idea of what their week looks like, what has to be accomplished each day, etc. For better or worse, that is what we've done this past year. How do you guys plan your year, lessons, assignments, etc.? I am not overly concerned with grades... anymore. Lol. Yes, I'm letting go... a little. :) Ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CalicoKat Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 (edited) I have been a devout Homeschool Tracker Plus user for 5 years. And for 5 years, I have had a lot of textbook style curriculum which has made planning inside HST+ a cakewalk. Now I have grown more ecletic, classical, CM... I have a beautifully written instructors guide for Elemental Science Biology that I just bought last night (whoo hoo!). I have to plan out SOTW1 when the stuff starts arriving tomorrow (again, whoo hoo!). Math, spelling/dictation, R&S grammar, etc would continue to be easy to schedule through HST+. But transferring over Elemental Science and entering everything for SOTW1... yikes. And before I continue, I should mention my kids like receiving an assignment sheet on Monday morning to get an idea of what their week looks like, what has to be accomplished each day, etc. For better or worse, that is what we've done this past year. How do you guys plan your year, lessons, assignments, etc.? I am not overly concerned with grades... anymore. Lol. Yes, I'm letting go... a little. :) Ideas? I like the schedules at this website for the R&S Grammar :) http://corefoundations.wordpress.com/scheds-english-and-history/ I find or create a schedule like the ones at this website for each subject and put them in a 3-ring binder tabbed for each of my kids. I use these schedules as a check off list for their progress and when they finish the subject I file it away in their record folder. Sometimes I just photocopy the table of contents and check off/date as they finish it. I also include behind their tab a Course of Study form from donnayoung.org's website listing all their current subjects. It's also got a place I can write down field trips, etc. I file those in their record folder when they've finished a semester. Some subjects carry over to the next semester--that's fine. I just put it on the next semester's course of study form for that child. I also have a tab for the upcoming semester, each child's new course of study and lesson plans are put there as I get them done. Forgot to add that each kid has their own 3-ring file folder that I put in six weeks worth of calendar (empty) I fill out their week's work over the weekend and include any upcoming events. My kids have also asked that I give them an hourly schedule so they know when to get things done. And they wanted a list of chores too. :) Edited May 18, 2010 by CalicoKat added about the kids folders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shelly in the Country Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 I have been a devout Homeschool Tracker Plus user for 5 years. And for 5 years, I have had a lot of textbook style curriculum which has made planning inside HST+ a cakewalk. Now I have grown more ecletic, classical, CM... I use HST+ as well. Textbooks are waaay easier to schedule, it's true :001_smile:. I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but what I do is write out all my lessons the old fashioned way first, then I enter them into HST+. I find it easier to visualize everything if I have a Quarter Planner sheet from Donnayoung.org in front of me. It takes a long time, but once it's done, it's done for all my kids. Unless I change curriculums again...we won't talk about that though. My kids are assignment sheet dependent now, too. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindyz Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 I just started using HST+ and we are only doing kindergarten. With that in mind, for our free form science, I have decided to do two lapbooks over the summer. I divided them up into 6 weeks each with 2 lessons each per week. I made a lesson plan with 12 lessons and for the page instruction, I just put, "work on insect lapbook for 45 minutes". So this means that we will take 45 minutes to study something about insects (his choice from several materials that I have ready for this project), and then create something from what we learned for the lapbook. I then move the 12 assignments to the grid putting them on the two days per week that I have planned and ... done. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechWife Posted May 19, 2010 Share Posted May 19, 2010 (edited) double post Edited May 19, 2010 by TechWife Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechWife Posted May 19, 2010 Share Posted May 19, 2010 I have been a devout Homeschool Tracker Plus user for 5 years. ... I have to plan out SOTW1 when the stuff starts arriving tomorrow (again, whoo hoo!)... But transferring over Elemental Science and entering everything for SOTW1... yikes... How do you guys plan your year, lessons, assignments, etc.? I am not overly concerned with grades... anymore. Lol. Yes, I'm letting go... a little. :) Ideas? Maybe this will help. I have used HST+ for 4 years now. This year I started using History Odyssey, which combines history, writing, literature, geography, etc. It is classical in nature and closely follows TWTM recommendations. This is what I did with HST+. I still entered the subjects as usual. Remember that lesson plans are totally independent of the schedule and it will help. I added a lesson plan that I called History Odyssey. Within that plan, I entered the assignments and attached them to their subject & course. area. I was able to see the entire HO lesson plan on one screen, yet still have assignments come under the appropriate subject headings. Now, lets work through an example. Here is a sample assignment from HO: Begin reading Johnny Tremain. Continue with the next lesson while you read. Read the excepts from Common Sense written by Thomas Paine located in Appendix H. Persuasive writing assignment: From the viewpoint of a colonist in early America, write a two page letter to a friend or family member back in England persuading them to move to America. Explain the benefits of living in America but also include warnings of the hardships and current political situation. Read The Story of Mankind, Chapter 51 Read Kingfisher History, pp. 316-317 Complete a revolution worksheet for the American Revolution and place it in the wars and conflicts section of your binder. Write short summaries on the following people... Now, lets say that I am going to spread this out over three days. In HST+ Under maintenance tab: Subject: Language Arts Course: Language Arts 7 Under teacher, lesson plans Add lesson plan: History Odyssey To enter the details, click "add" to get the screen to come up. I would enter the above assignments as follows: 1) Plan: History Odyssey. Subject: Language Arts Course: Language Arts 7 Activity: Reading Resource: Johnny Tremain Sequence number: 1 # of days: 7 2) Plan: History Odyssey Subject: History Course: Early Modern History Activity: Reading Resource: Common Sense Sequence number 1 3) Plan: History Odyssey Subject: Language Arts Course: Language Arts 7 Activity: writing Resource: any Sequence number 2 # of days: 2 Directions: From the viewpoint of a colonist in early America, write a two page letter to a friend or family member back in England persuading them to move to America. Explain the benefits of living in America but also include warnings of the hardships and current political situation. 4) Plan: History Odyssey Subject: History Course: Early Modern History Activity: reading Resource: The Story of Mankind Sequence number 2 Page/Lesson/Chapter: Ch. 52 5) Plan: History Odyssey Subject: History Course: Early Modern History Activity: Reading Resource: Kingfisher History Sequence: 2 page/lesson/chapter: pp. 316-317 6) Plan: History Odyssey Subject: History Course: Early Modern History Activity: worksheet Resource: Kingfisher History Sequence: 2 page/lesson/chapter: pp. 316-317 7) Plan: History Odyssey Subject: History Course: Early Modern History Activity: summarize Resource: any Sequence: 2 directions: Write short summaries on the following people... When I get ready to make assignments, I open the lesson plan for History Odyssey and all of the assignments are in one place. I select everything with the same sequence number and submit it to the assignment grid for the date I want it completed. HST+ does its magic and scheduling is complete. I hope this helps give you some ideas for using HST+ with a flexible curriculum. Once you figure out what you want to name the lesson plan, it is an easy thing to figure out what subjects/courses to assign them to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoatogirl Posted July 30, 2010 Share Posted July 30, 2010 I was without my computer for a week in April. I had to write the kids list on a piece of paper. Strangely enough, it felt like it was quicker to write it down then to type everything into Tracker. I could go to where they keep their books and sit on the floor with everything around me and just make a list. So now I don't know what I'm going to do this year. I thought Tracker was saving me time on the repetive task of writing down the assignments that don't change every week (Wordly Wise, for instance)...which it does since you can enter the incrementally. But sometimes I put things on the wrong date or make other inputting errors and discover them when I ask a child how the latin went today, and he says it wasn't on his list. I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the software. It is wonderful for computing grades and transcripts, but I'm still trying to determine how it fits into my life on a daily basis. Wendy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasharowan Posted July 30, 2010 Share Posted July 30, 2010 For things that are already planned out, I just put lesson 1, lesson 2 etc., in HST+ and when they get to that part, they refer to their sheet to read lesson 1, etc. Although, now that I think about it I may have to input more for my oldest so that I can make up a transcript on HST+. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalanamak Posted July 30, 2010 Share Posted July 30, 2010 If you go over to the K-8 board, there is a record or near-record long (and productive) thread about planning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcconnellboys Posted July 31, 2010 Share Posted July 31, 2010 For history, I take the chapter titles from SOTW and use those as my topics. For those topics that I know there's less info out there for, or that we're just not going to cover in depth, I do two a week. Otherwise, I do one topic per week. Once I have my 36 weekly topics, I begin to plug in spreads from my history encyclopedias and other such books that we will use all year. After those basic books are done, I plug in living books that I want to cover each week, in whole or in part. I do lit alongside history, too, and also add in ideas for writing topics for the week. I may change those later, but at least I have something to work with in the beginning. I just do a little at a time until I finally finish! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jennifer Posted June 1, 2013 Share Posted June 1, 2013 bumping for my own benefit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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