This Fall marks our 5th year with home schooling! Joseph will be a big 4th grader and Catherine is moving up to 3rd. Benjamin is still only 4 years old, so he’s not an official student yet since we don’t see the need for “pre K.” This year, I’m just buying two $4 workbooks from Rod & Staff to get out for him to work on occasionally.

Our curriculum consists mainly of Seton materials. The Seton Home Study school is 30 years strong and known for academic excellence (especially in the language arts) and solidly reinforces our Catholic faith. To save money, we don’t enroll officially with Seton. Instead, I’ve always written the lesson plans myself by hand each week.

But this year, to save LOTS of time and hassle, I’m trying something new! It’s a software program called Homeschool Tracker Plus and allows you to input lesson plans, activities and events for your children and then print them out as needed whenever you want.

I love the idea that I can create the lesson plans before school begins and not have to fool with it again for the entire year. What a blessing! Even better, once I put the lesson plans into Homeschool Tracker, they are saved for good. That means no re-do’s when a younger child reaches that grade level! Each week in the school year, I’ll be able to print lesson plans for Joseph and Catherine and they can check off items as they complete them each day.

Later in the year, after we’ve used the software program for a while, I’ll post a review and link to it here.

Does your family home school? If so, are you doing anything new or different this Fall?