This year, I am going to be very organized with our schooling. I am going to do a full post on that evolution, but the short version is that The D, who has been recently diagnosed with ADHD, really needs more structure in order to deal with life.

Yesterday, I took all of my books that I am using this year for our core curriculum and input the assignments into Homeschool Tracker.

I have played around with Homeschool Tracker before, but I have never put a full year of assignments into it. I have to say, it was pretty awesome.

The software allows you to “copy” an assignment over a given date range. You can select which days of the week you want that assignment copied, which students it is for, and (optionally) what chapter or lesson you want to start from and what increment you want to increase by. It automatically excludes any dates you have pre-set in your calendar as holidays.

For example, if I plan to do a chapter of history every Tuesday and Thursday from September 1 through October 31, starting with chapter 3. It will automatically assign the next chapter for each Tuesday and Thursday. If one of the days is a holiday, it will skip over it.

Then I can print off an assignment list daily or weekly for each student.

I know for some, this sounds like overkill for a homeschool, but the D always wants a list of what we need to do for school work each day and now I will have it ready at my fingertips.

And I did all of this (and much more!) on the free version. It even works with Vista. (Ugh, yes, I have Vista on my laptop.)

I don’t know about you, but I am severely schedule-challenged. I could not keep a schedule if my life depended on it.

For many homeschoolers, this would not be a problem. (Think, unschooling.)

But since I live in a state that requires end-of-the-year reporting, based on a beginning-of-the year curriculum, I need to get certain things done.

Finding a balance between relaxed and scheduled has been a challenge for me, to say the least.

I once read a suggestion on a message board that I want to try.

A homeschooling dad said that he designs subject units and the kids have to have a certain number of units complete in each subject each week.

His kids are older, so he lets them be responsible for completing their required work. They have the flexibility to do it when they want to.

For example, one chapter of math counts as one unit and the child must complete three units of math per week.

This I can do.

At least, I think I can.

I’ll let you know next week how it’s working out.