TOS Review~ My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping System)

A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to use My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping System) from MySchoolYear.com to plan and record our homeschool lessons. For this review, I was given an annual membership to this program. A annual membership costs $40. You can choose to do a month by month plan for $5, but the yearly membership saves you money. Who doesn't want to save money. Please be sure to check the website for current up-to-date pricing since pricing can change. MySchoolYear.com does offer a free 1 month trial. This allows you to see what they have to offer to decide if the program will work for your family and you.

My School Year (Homeschool Record Keeping System) is an online planner for homeschooling families. This homeschool organization tool helps parents get their homeschool lessons into order. It offers a variety of tools to accomplish this! This homeschool planning tool allows parents to plan, organize, record lessons, track grades, and report grades. It gives homeschool parents the organization tools they need to stay on top of it all.
Organizational Tools Automated Attendance Tracking Automated Grading Lesson Plan Generator Lesson Rescheduler Teacher's Aid
Tracking, Reviewing, Reporting Tools Activities Tracking Reports Class Grade Review Lesson Plan Sharing Dashboard  
So How Did I Use My School Year Homeschooling Record Keeping System?
Since I already had this year's schedule already done. I started working on next year's school year. The set up section requires the most time. Under the set up, section I found the following tabs Grading Scale, Materials, Schools, Students, Subjects, and Terms(school years). The grading scale was already done, but if I wanted to  make a few changes to the scale I could. I was able to set up grading using numbers, letters, and pass/fail. Under materials is where I added all the books we would be using for the upcoming school year. I could add textbooks, workbooks, manipulatives, software, and videos we would use for our lessons. The material tabs included a section to add a reading log for students. This will come in handy to keep track of all the books the kids will be reading. There was a separate section for authors. I didn't use this section. A separate section didn't make sense to me. I think it should have been included with the reading log or with the lesson plan material list. The next two sections were the school and student tabs. Here is where I added our school's name and added my students. They ask for a lot of information for the students. I didn't fill in half of it. Date of birth, email, cell phone number, etc. My kids don't have email addresses or email accounts. This probably would be useful if you had older kids.

The Subject tab is section. This is where I added all the subjects we would be doing next year. They give you a list of standard subjects like Fine Arts, Language Arts, Math, History, etc. I was able to delete subjects, like Logic, and add subjects, like Geography. I tailored it to our needs. The final tab under the set-up section was Terms. This is where I set up our start date, end date, days we attend school, schedule our days off, and enroll your students into the school year. Wow....that took awhile. Now we were all set up.
Now that I was all set up, I could get down to work. Lesson planning is always tedious. It doesn't matter whether you use an online or paper planner a lot has to be accomplished. This is where things became a little confusing for me. It took me a little while to figure out how to plan my lessons with this program. I even walked away from the program because I became frustrated. I always came back to it. I really wanted to figure it out. After a few days (maybe longer) of struggling to figure this program out. I finally did. I learned a lot about the program by pocking around myself and a by receiving a few helpful hints from the other members of the Review Crew.

Since our school year hasn't started yet, I can't explain how all the recording or grading works. The Homeroom tab is the one stop spot to see all that is going on in your school. I can't wait to see things move once we started recording everything.
What did I think?
The initial Log in and set was a little time consuming (you have a lot of information to enter). Like any planner set up always takes the longest. Once I got into the actual lesson planning, I was completely confused. The process of adding classes and lessons was a different from other online planners I have used in the past. I 'll admit I really started to dislike the program. I felt it was talking too long to figure it out. So I took a few days away from the program and than came back to it. After taking some time to learn the program, I realized it was rather quite simple to use. I honestly believe I was over thinking the whole thing. My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping System is the 4th online homeschool planning tool I have used. I have to say that it is one of my favorites. I honestly can't decided between this one and the one I had been using. Both programs are pretty amazing. They both offer a variety of tools. I will be honest ans saw that I stopped using the other online program half way through the year last year. I went back to my old paper and pen planner. I guess I'm an old fashion kind of gal. Since I haven't been able to use or see all that My School Year has to offer, I'll leave my decision undecided. I am looking forward to using this homeschool planning system this year. We tend to fall behind a little (o.k. maybe a lot), so I am looking forward to see how  can adjust my schedule with the Lesson Rescheduler.
Want to check out My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping System for yourself? Visit their website MySchoolYear.com and sign up for a free one month trail!

Want to learn more about My School Year homeschool record keeping system?

Stop by to see what the other members have to say about this planning tool!

Please Note~ This post may contain affiliate links. If you choose to click on a link, add it to your cart and complete your purchase, I will receive a small percentage. We are very grateful for this additional source of income. Thank you. 

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