OR

you could use the Template Dialogue Box below to create a template — an imaginary ideal week, but with the rapidly changing books & assignments left blank, to use all year ( yea! ).

 In fact, you have the option to create several templates.  Maybe during camping, haying or summer vacation weeks, your schedule looks different. You can make as many templates as you want.

Then, each time you sit down to plan your week’s lessons, you could tap the "Dupe" button to open this "Duplicate Week's Lessons" dialogue box

where, thanks to some cleverly selected defaults, you can instantly duplicate & forward date all the lessons from the template to your upcoming week for all your students, simply by verifying that the destination date selected (the next Monday without lessons) is correct and pressing the "OK" button. You will be returned to the Template box, where you can press the "Lessons" button to pull up your actual Lesson Plans:

Here you can use the box or the table below it to update changing assignments, reading books, etc., and to add or delete lessons.

If you need to bump all your lessons ahead to make room for a field trip or a visit from Grandma, just return to the "Dupe" button and tell it you want to Move Lessons. It will let you choose who, when & where, and move them all  for you.

Lastly, press the "Print" button to get this nice looking report to use for a lesson plan & log. I 3-hole-punch mine and keep them in a 3-ring binder.

If you want an Assignment Sheet, print two of them. Each of my kids has a clip board on which they keep their day's assignment sheet, so that they know what to do next, if Mom is out feeding the cows when they finish an assignment. It helps my guys realize how much work they are facing that day, and why they may not be able to dawdle, if they want to make it to Gymnastics at 4:00 pm. They also get a sense of accomplishment from checking off finished lessons.  If your kids are old enough to benefit from them, assignment sheets may help to reduce down time.

In my lesson plan book, I use a bright colored ink to record any scores in the left box, and the hours in the right box.  While they are not visible on this plan (because I don't grade my children at this time), any lessons that may be graded will show the possible number of points on the lesson plan under the score box.  I also feel free to write all over my plans, if books or assignments have changed.

Some folks were frustrated that they couldn't see a whole week at a time, as they did when they were squeezing books & assignments into itty bitty boxes, so we created the following "Week-a-Glance" Form, which you can view or print to get a better sense of the shape of each student's week.  The "Glance" button in the Templae or Lesson Plan box will access its dialogue box.  The printed report looks like this:

This form is mostly for psychological comfort.  However, in the dialogue box that creates it, you can adjust lesson orders, which is handy.

When you want to Log Lessons (once a week works best), set your notebook beside your computer. Press the Log Lessons button, and your children's oldest unlogged lesson will pop-up:

There the cursor will already be flashing in "Logged Hours" for you to enter in the number of credit hours/units or the actual time, whichever you use in your school, in whole numbers or decimals. If you are grading, and if this is a lesson to be graded, then tab into the next box to enter the score your student achieved. Then, press "Enter" on your keyboard, or "Log" in the dialogue box, or "alt" "l".   Presto!   That lesson is logged.

        NOW IS THAT FAST & EASY, OR WHAT !?!

Of course, you may stay in this dialogue box to change any of the information.

You can use the "Delete" button or "alt" "d" to delete a lesson that you didn't do that day/week (Believing that life is too short, I admit to checking off in my notebook, and logging in this box, lessons done/finished later in the same week, without troubling to change the dates on the lesson; they have a special cell in the county jail set aside for me).  But, if it didn't get done that week, I just delete it.

If you want to log a lesson that didn't appear in your Lesson Plan, such as a forgotton soccer practice or an unexpected craft attack, then press the "New" button, and the box will retain your date & student, and drop your cursor into the "Subject" box for you to begin adding in that lesson.

Once I have entered my hours (& scores) into the computer, I move my Lesson Plan into a different part of my 3-ring notebook called "Logged Lessons", because these print outs have become my logged lessons. While you could reprint them with tidy printed numbers in the score & hours boxes, I believe that it saves alot of paper & ink to use them as is, and that they would be more convincing (human hands appear to have touched them) than a reprinted copy would be, if they were ever subpeonaed to back up the "Monthly Log Report" in a court setting.

When you enter information in the "Logged Hours" box, the database is already generating two reports automatically, which you may look at or print out at any time. To get the most accurate information, I wait to print mine out until I have logged the entire month into the computer. I find the following one, "Summary of Hours", most useful:

If you are familiar with Missouri's HS law, this will be pretty self-explanatory. The one cute little extra we added is a percentage to let you know how well you are accomplishing your hours at a rate that will let you finish by your target date. Because during "Set Up" you gave the computer information about your school year (start, end, holiday dates), it can calculate how many hours you would want to have accomplished by the end of any chosen month, and from that create a percentage. If it tells you that you are near 100%, then you are right on target. If you are running way above 100% then you can afford to slow down or take a vacation, or you can expect to finish school early this year. Or, if it is way below 100%....well, do we really want to talk about that and its implications!?!

I print these out after all hours for the month are logged and keep them in my 3-ring notebook behind a tab called "Monthly Reports".

The second report, "Monthly Log Report", is the one your lawyer may recommend you hand over in a legal challenge, because it contains the minimum amount of information requested by the law.  However, be sure to let your lawyer know what all your reports look like so s/he can determine what is best to submit in your situation.  It looks like this:

For those of you who grade, when you are entering a score for your child's lesson, the computer is preparing to create this Grade Report:

Remember, when you "Set Up" your program, you chose alot of things such as number & end date for grading periods, grading standards, lesson types & weights, all of which affect this report. If you realize that you have made a booboo, you can always return to set up to readjust your settings, and your grade report will change accordingly.

After you have created the grade report (which you should do for each student at the end of the school year, even if you DON'T grade assignments) summary hours and grades are stored for creating the Transcript.

That's it. Your calculator will NEVER be needed, not even at the end of the year.   (-: