Starting our 4th year hs...dreading HST.

[MistyJ]

Did anyone leave HST behind, and use weekly student planners?

 

I can't face the early year input of all the plans, worrying constantly if it's going to crash (that happened early last year, and I had to redo everything), the click/click/click on Sunday nights. Trying to correct things that scheduled wrong. Having old lessons pop up when I go to print a report.

 

Scribbling in a student planner for an hour on Sunday night seems to simple and refreshing. (I only hs 2 kids.)

[Audrey]

Did anyone leave HST behind, and use weekly student planners?

 

I can't face the early year input of all the plans, worrying constantly if it's going to crash (that happened early last year, and I had to redo everything), the click/click/click on Sunday nights. Trying to correct things that scheduled wrong. Having old lessons pop up when I go to print a report.

 

Scribbling in a student planner for an hour on Sunday night seems to simple and refreshing. (I only hs 2 kids.)

 

 

That's kind of why I gave up on HST. I use the computer to do my own scheduling and I love the neatness of printed sheets, but it was far more time consuming, and far less customizable than doing it hand-written.

 

It takes me about a 1/2 hour a week (one kid) to pencil in everything. Pencil erases, too, for those times when life happens and things need to be shifted around mid-week. My dh does lessons with ds at least one day a week, too. He much prefers my hand-written plans because I tend to make more relevant notes than when I was using HST, which seemed more "formulaic."

 

HST also isn't very conducive to the curricula we use, which is more organic in flow than a computer program can manage. I ended having to enter every day's lessons singly for each subject. Some of the subjects overlap, too, and HST doesn't really have a way to deal with that.

 

I use the Homeschooler's Journal by Ferg'N'Us. This year I'm going to give the Teacher's Plan Book from Staples a try. The boxes are a little bigger and each day is arranged vertically, which I prefer, rather than horizontally.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Audrey

[Heidi7Sue]

I left it behind checking it out briefly. Never actually used it. But then, I also don't like computerized calendars or to-do lists of any sort - it just works better for me to put it all on paper.

 

ETA: I have a friend who loves it. But her youngest is 11, and all three kids get into HST every day to find out what their assignments are, and check them off there. Apparently it really helps her keep track of where they all are.

[Carrie12345]

I bought it last summer, and abandoned it within our first few months of school. It's simply not flexible enough for my homeschool. When you factor in all the changes I make along the way, the program is way more time consuming and frustrating than paper and pencil (for me)!

 

What I would love, and would be willing to pay some pretty big bucks for, is the scheduler that Connections Academy uses. When my kids were using them, I was able to manipulate that scheduler to cover nearly every scenario imaginable, from taking a full week off at the spur of the moment, to deciding to turn a year long course into a semester course with double lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays and a single lesson on Fridays, and then skip 4 non-sequential lessons and have it re-calibrate the following week (or some similar arrangement). It's *almost* tempting enough to go back to CA for. ;)

[Jkodman]

That's kind of why I gave up on HST. I use the computer to do my own scheduling and I love the neatness of printed sheets, but it was far more time consuming, and far less customizable than doing it hand-written.

 

:iagree:

 

I wish the format was more user friendly for inputting the information. Pop-up windows would be nice instead of the format used now. Every year I use it for a while, get behind and start using a written plan book. Still debating this year.

[anissa]

I vote for...dump it! You do not need the stress. I went to the local teacher store and found my perfect planner. Now I am happily filling it up.

[fairfarmhand]

In the last couple years, I find teacher planners at the local Dollar Tree. I can get one for the lessons for each kid for a buck. I can't print things for a full year off my printer for that cheap!

[Halcyon]

I tried all sorts of computer planners too. Now I just have a blank template that I made on xcel, and I fill it in as we go. So much less stressful and we get just as much done.

[Kate in Arabia]

I've always used a paper planner/diary, but this year I'm going to try doing my own thing with Excel. Is there something I'm not considering? I had thought it would be fairly straightforward...

[Matryoshka]

Are you guys using HST free version, or HST Plus? I find the Plus version very flexible, because I enter everything in the lesson plans, but I just have to click things over once a week or so. If we don't finish something one day, I usually don't bother rescheduling it, I just don't check it as finished, and it will show up the next day again anyway. If all the lessons aren't done by the end of the week, I just let it run over and assign less the next week. If things move around or life happens, it still doesn't stress me out because the lessons are only actually assigned a week or so at a time and it's easy to just assign them whenever we get to them. Even if we drop something mid-year it doesn't matter because I just don't assign the lessons from that plan. Or if I add a new book mid-year, I just divvy it up and start assigning it whenever.

 

I type faster than I write, and moving things around in pencil is way more trouble for me than clicking something over - I don't have to erase, I don't have to re-write, and I don't run out of room on the page to write. Also, with the feature that allows you to auto-increment pages/chapters, most books take a matter of minutes for me to input for the whole school year.

 

I'd never use the HST free version, beause at least I think everything gets assgined right to the grid so you have to bump everything if you don't get to it on time (correct me if I'm wrong about this). Edu-Track was like that, and it was way more trouble than it was worth.

 

Of course, as with anything, different strokes and YMMV. :)

[Gooblink]

Okay, dunce question what is HST? I assume you don't mean the new Hamonized Sales Text (In Ontario, Canada)

 

Homeschool Tracker (TGHomesoft)

 

http://www.homeschooltracker.com/

 

I tried the free version and thought it was more trouble than it was worth. Then a friend showed me all the cool stuff she got with the Plus version, so I bought that.

 

I've input many of our lesson plans and am about to get started entering our TOG unit. I still don't know if it's worth it, but I'll give it a good effort before I ditch it in favor of paper. I love pen and paper, personally....

[mom31257]

I really got tired of HST very quickly. I bought these planners for my kids for this year. There are 3 different versions, too. They have great supplement pages as well as a great weekly 2 page spread. If you look at the sample of the pages, there are 3 little boxes in the upper right corner of each day's blocks. I'm going to use those for the kids to check off that it is done and to record grades.

 

http://www.goodnewsplanners.com/

 

I actually designed my own planner in addition to theirs. Here is some info about it on my blog.

 

http://lovingjesusandourlife.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-planner.html

 

Letting go of HST was very freeing for me and I'll never go back. I tried to like it and make it work, but it's just not for me.

[MistyJ]

Thanks, everyone. Very liberating!!!!:party:

 

I think my husband and I might even open some champagne. He walked around every Sunday saying "Did you back it up? Are you sure you backed it up???"