If you use an Excel spreadsheet to plan your year...

[MamaSheep]

...how do you set it up? Subjects across the top, with days down the side? A separate worksheet for each quarter, or each week? I'm trying to wrap my brain around this.

 

[Also, please don't suggest Homeschool Tracker. I have had it for years and never really been able to make friends with it. It is another option I am considering, but right now I'm toying with Excel, which I have been attempting to be friends with, and pondering how it could be made to do what I want.]

[happypamama]

I list all subjects straight down, one after the other, each lesson/assignment in a line. Then I use a second spreadsheet for each week. I copy and paste from the first sheet onto the second. The first sheet is all in order of how I want them on the second sheet, and I include blank lines too, so that that for history, I click and copy the title "History," then "SOTW, chapter 1," then a blank line, and then it's paste to the second sheet. It's a little cumbersome, but it works nicely.

[Erica in OR]

Subjects down the left, days across the top for a single week. Kid's name/grade/week # in the uppermost, leftmost corner. Each subject's rectangle for a day is two or three lines. Bottom of the spreadsheet is an "Activities" subject, which lists additional homeschool events, music lessons, etc. I give a copy of that sheet to the kid for the week to cross off things as they get them done and file one sheet in my massive binder for the year. It all fits on one page.

 

I can send you a file if you'd like to have something to take a look at. PM me if you do.

 

Erica in OR

[nono]

Column A = First child's subjects, common subjects, second child's subjects.

 

Column B = WTM suggested minutes per week. ;)

 

Coumn C-G = M-F.

 

Each week gets a tab.

 

Cover tab is the entire year laid out, as in what weeks, or partial weeks, I will be teaching. I don't lay out more than the first three weeks of tabs after I lay out the year.Then, once we're underway, I'll do a month at a time.

[MamaSheep]

Thanks. :)

 

My next question is, if you have an interruption or a bad day, and you need to, say, reschedule everything back a day for a couple of weeks, do you just cut and paste all the assignments where you want them? I was thinking if I put the subjects across the top, and the days down the side, then if I needed to slide things around I could just delete that review day that's coming up in three weeks, and slide the whole range of assignments down a slot. Then I'd have a page break at the end of each week in order to print one week at a time. Is it really better to have a different worksheet for each week?

Edited July 13, 2012 by MamaSheep

[happypamama]

I think it's really up to you. I like having a separate spreadsheet for each week, because I also print them out, so that there's a page for each day, and then I check off stuff we do, plus I add extra notes, like "went swimming" or "listened to Such-and-such in the car" at the bottom. So it's my backup in case my school district ever questions me, and it's my personal family journal too.

 

If I need to adjust something, I just cut and paste it to the appropriate day.

[Mom-2-7]

I do days across the top and subjects down the left side.

 

In separate tabs I have divided each subject into daily lessons for the year. Each lesson is given a unique number (1 to 180). I have then linked the subject on my students tab to that particular subject tab.

 

So all I have to do each week is type in the lesson numbers for each subject and it automatically pulls the information from the other tabs.

 

That way, when we get off schedule (and we will!), there is no cutting and pasting.

[MamaSheep]

I think it's really up to you. I like having a separate spreadsheet for each week, because I also print them out, so that there's a page for each day, and then I check off stuff we do, plus I add extra notes, like "went swimming" or "listened to Such-and-such in the car" at the bottom. So it's my backup in case my school district ever questions me, and it's my personal family journal too.

 

If I need to adjust something, I just cut and paste it to the appropriate day.

 

Yeah...it's just that if lots of people who have been doing something longer than I have all do something the same way, there's usually a good reason for it, and I like to understand the reason before I decide to do it differently because otherwise I tend to get myself in trouble and have to go back and do it that way anyway. If I just understand it better going in, I can save myself a lot of work.

[MamaSheep]

I do days across the top and subjects down the left side.

 

In separate tabs I have divided each subject into daily lessons for the year. Each lesson is given a unique number (1 to 180). I have then linked the subject on my students tab to that particular subject tab.

 

So all I have to do each week is type in the lesson numbers for each subject and it automatically pulls the information from the other tabs.

 

That way, when we get off schedule (and we will!), there is no cutting and pasting.

 

That sounds like maybe what I need to learn how to do.

[Mom-2-7]

That sounds like maybe what I need to learn how to do.

 

You use the function "Vlookup" to link the tabs.

[MamaSheep]

You use the function "Vlookup" to link the tabs.

 

Thanks. I'll play around with that and see if I can figure it out. :)

Edited July 13, 2012 by MamaSheep

[Mom-2-7]

I can send you mine to look at if you want. Just PM me your email address.

[nono]

MamaSheep, yes, cut and paste is my friend. Also, since we do clean-ups on Sat. morning, drag and drop is my friend too. :)

 

Excel functionality like Mom-2-7 is referencing is exactly why I started with Excel. Since I'm only managing 2 who are converging more than anticipated on shared teaching, I haven't used much of the powerful functions I was envisioning when I started. :bored: But why build more than I need for now, right? I think you can build exactly what you need (how you brain sees things) with Excel. Have fun!!!

 

Mom-2-7, I like your layout (if I'm visualizing it properly in my head). :thumbup1:

[Mama_Rana]

I use Numbers, Mac's version of Excel, but I think this would all be possible in Excel.

 

I have multiple "sheets". The first sheet is an overview of the year. Across the top are the subjects and along the sides are the weeks. I indicate any weeks that will be "vacation" and any weeks where we're likely to need to go light due to birthdays or whatever. I enter the unit or general topic for the week.

 

Then I have other sheets where I plan out the subjects in a bit more detail. A science sheet to plan how I wanted to use Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding. A sheet for implementing MCT. A sheet for the composers and artists I wanted to cover. A sheet with a cumulative book list for all subjects. I don't have individual sheets for every subject.

 

Then I have sheets for each week where I planned out the specifics of what I was going to cover each week. These I did a week or two in advance. Sometimes I'd do a whole month to six weeks, but I'd often have to do a lot of editing as things got delayed or whatever.

 

My weekly planning sheets changed throughout the year. At first I just listed all the activities by subject so my DS could have some choice. But I found he was "saving" all the "boring" stuff til the end: math, spelling, etc. So I rearranged to schedule individual days out in more detail.

 

A couple months ago I started working on next year's worksheet. It's proving tricky though cuz we haven't finished everything I'd planned for this year, and the summer isn't proving to be as productive as I'd hoped [camps, swim lessons, etc], so we'll see.

[Mama_Rana]

That sounds like maybe what I need to learn how to do.

 

Also, I have visions of doing this, but haven't set it up yet. I wanted to link my overview sheet with individual sheets for each week so I could quickly change multiple sheets. I used to know how to do that in Excel, but I need DH to help me set it up in Numbers.

[Carrie12345]

Thanks. :)

 

My next question is, if you have an interruption or a bad day, and you need to, say, reschedule everything back a day for a couple of weeks, do you just cut and paste all the assignments where you want them? I was thinking if I put the subjects across the top, and the days down the side, then if I needed to slide things around I could just delete that review day that's coming up in three weeks, and slide the whole range of assignments down a slot. Then I'd have a page break at the end of each week in order to print one week at a time. Is it really better to have a different worksheet for each week?

 

Here's what I'm aiming for this year.

 

I'm setting up a Day 1/Day 2 cycle for 160 days. If we do Day 1 on, say, January 8th, but January 9th goes to pot, we'll just do Day 2 on January 10th. No muss, no fuss.

The extra 20 days are for catch up or filed trips, etc. We have a 180 requirement.

[Another Lynn]

I have a file for planning that ends up being an electronic version of lots of miscellaneous papers. One sheet is a grid of subjects down the side and children across the top, filled in with what resources I expect to use for the year, and a column for what I still need to buy, etc. (Sometimes I do this again for one child at a time looking at the last couple years' resources and the next couple years' possibilities just to see how it looks.) Another sheet is just brainstorming different resources I could use, or might want to research. On another sheet I start making a list of potential literature books. There might be several sheets of Literature lists before I finalize it. (Sometimes I want to save what I was thinking during the process). Another sheet is a potential schedule with times out of the house marked so I can see how the week will go. Another sheet has a sample weekly assignment sheet (days across the top, subjects down the side, start with oldest child and finish with youngest child), so I can play with how the assignments might look on a weekly basis. For subjects that are not open and go, they may have their own sheets where I plan/estimate what will happen week by week.

 

Then, when the year starts, I start a new file where I prepare a weekly assignment sheet for each child, days across the top, subjects down the side. Each week gets it's own sheet. I put all children on the same sheet inserting page breaks between each one for printing. I usually prepare and print these on Sunday night, taking into account what did or did not get completed the week before. My time saver on these is to highlight the entire prior week's sheet (by clicking in that little box in the corner where the row headers and column headers come together), copy, go to a new blank sheet and paste. That way all formatting and column widths are transferred over and all I do is go through and change page numbers, a few book titles, assignments, etc. It's pretty quick. At the end of the year I have a stack of paper copies each child used as well as an excel file full of the year's assignment sheets. At the end of the year I make a sheet of children across the top and subjects down the side and fill in what we actually used and completed. (The other thing I do that I think saves time is not bother outlining all the cells in excel, but just choose "print gridlines" before I print. This saves me a lot of formatting headaches if I'm deleting rows, inserting rows, etc. as I make changes to the assignment sheet.)

[MamaSheep]

I really appreciate everyone's willingness to share! I think I am beginning to get my brain around this.

 

This year's scheduling is scaring me, even though I've been at this for six years already and have only one student. In the past I've been able to be a lot more flexible with scheduling, and I found it worked best to advance plan what needed to get done in a week, and then every week sit down and divvy it up into the available days (and decide what could just be skipped). Last year ds took a religion class away from home, but it was the same time every day, and easy to work around. This year he'll be taking another religion class, and we're adding in one class per semester down at the local high school. But the high school is on a REALLY WEIRD SCHEDULE. They have an A/B block schedule where they take the classes every other day, and you have to keep track of whether any given day is an A day or a B day. And just to complicate things further, the classes begin and end at different times every day. Well, almost; Mondays and Thursdays are on the same schedule, as are Tuesdays and Fridays, and Wednesday is on its own schedule. If there's ever an assembly, there's a whole other schedule (so I'm going to have to get hold of an assembly calendar somehow). So I'm going to have to quit doing the "routine" thing, where we get started whenever we get around to it, and keep going until we're finished, and get us all working on more of a "schedule", where things happen at specific times--and at a different time every day of the week. It is boggling my brain. I think I'm going to need to make some planner pages for ds and me both to keep us on track, and probably at least a month in advance. So if I can make a master set of lesson plans for each subject, and then make two sets of planner pages, one for him and one for me, with different formatting and details, and call the same lesson information into them, that would be absolutely AWESOME. And then if I need to make changes, if I can make them in the lesson plans and have them automatically change over in the planner pages, it would make me absolutely giddy.

[MamaSheep]

I can send you mine to look at if you want. Just PM me your email address.

 

Thank you, that was REALLY helpful. It looks like I need to learn about the IF function as well. But it looks like Excel will do just what I want it to once I educate myself a little more.

[Mama_Rana]

Thank you, that was REALLY helpful. It looks like I need to learn about the IF function as well. But it looks like Excel will do just what I want it to once I educate myself a little more.

 

IF function? Do tell. :bigear:

[Mom-2-7]

IF function? Do tell. :bigear:

 

I use it mostly to look into a cell in one of the other tabs, and if that cell is 0 or null then it returns a blank cell. Otherwise it shows an error message.

 

So its mostly for aesthetics.

[MamaSheep]

IF function? Do tell. :bigear:

 

Well...I'm still figuring it out.

 

Mom-2-7 ever so very kindly emailed me her Excel file, and I'm poking through it seeing how she has it set up. There are lots and lots of functions that say things like:

 

=IF(B14=0,"",VLOOKUP(B$14,Writing!$A$3:$E$116,3))

 

Having learned more about it, I think she's just using the IF function at the beginning to make it leave the square on the planner page blank if she doesn't have a lesson number entered. If she HAS typed in a lesson number, then the VLOOKUP function that comes after the IF function will look on her "Writing" worksheet and find the lesson number she entered and then automatically import the assignments to her child's planner page.

 

If I'm understanding correctly.

Edited July 13, 2012 by MamaSheep

[MamaSheep]

I use it mostly to look into a cell in one of the other tabs, and if that cell is 0 or null then it returns a blank cell. Otherwise it shows an error message.

 

So its mostly for aesthetics.

 

Looks like you were typing at the same time as me. Glad to know I interpreted that correctly. :)

[MamaSheep]

I think my brain is becoming a pretzel. It looks like the next thing to do would be to go through and put all the assignments for each subject into a spreadsheet. So maybe I'll work on that for a few days and then come back to this whole VLOOKUP thing. I think I know how to structure the spreadsheets so it will be able to look things up, so I know how I want to start.

 

Thanks so much ladies, this has been very helpful.

 

(I may be back again in a few days with more cries for help.)