Homeschool Tracker is a Sanity Saver … PLUS!!

As we’ve moved from the early childhood years of regular, mostly, routine to requiring more structure in our day just to fit in the myriad of things a homeschooling family wants to achieve…. I’ve been cleverly sidestepping… a schedule.

After fudging and stumbling our way through most of 2008 without one and noticing how much we were not achieving, and could be if only we were better organised.
We had the ‘force of habit’ in place for our general daily routine, but the 'accountability' was not really there with some homeschooling tasks. Meaning, things that we wanted and needed to do during the day were just not being achieved. They got pushed to the side during the busier moments and we didn't come back until we were so far past that 'topic' it was busy work not an relevant, enjoyable, learning activity.

So I worked my way through:
Susan Bradricks’ C/D, 24 Hours Is All You Get.
Along with, Managers of Their Home by Terri Maxwell
and then........ just put everything aside.
I didn’t need to be that structured, right?

Fast forward…
We *finally* mastered H.o.w. to use Homeschool Tracker Plus (HST), inputting Sonlight's non-shareable content & all the other toots & whistles we were using for Core 1 into the program.
After using HST for a while I realised it was going to be easier for us to use the lesson plan schedule which needed our routine put to time . So I pulled out all our drafted sheets done with 24 Hours & MOTH, blended the 3 tools together – viola!
It’s all loaded in now, & can I say this year, 2009’s work load has been more manageable because we have a schedule to come back to after “life’s moments” have happened.
The schedule is our servant not our master and we adjust it to suit us, not stress ourselves out to fit the schedule.
HST has a wonderful “reassign” feature so lessons are not lost on a page somewhere, they get done next time around.

And the force of Habit with 'Time Table', ‘Punctuality’ & ‘Task Completion’ are being exercised regularly.

We continue to use The Peg Board for our instant visual check list.