Synchronizing Math Programs Part I

So, I may have gone a little overboard with the math curricula for Blue. We have Rightstart A and B, Singapore Essentials A and B, Singapore Standard 1A and 1B, and all the Miquon books! I have also heard great things about Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP) but think I need to get the first three under control before adding a fourth.

At this point we are using RightStart as our spine and the others as supplements. I've been struggling with how to synchronize the three programs since they cover materials in different orders. Today I decided to disassemble Miquon Orange and Singapore Essentials (this is a big step for me because I hate taking pages out of books, it feels almost sacrilegious!). The Miquon pages tear our nicely but a razor blade and I have a hot date with Singapore Essentials later.

After all the pages are out of the books I am going to try to divide them into an order that makes sense for our family, update Homeschool Tracker with the order sequence and then slip them into page protectors.

 

Homeschool Skedtrack

I was looking on-line for a free homeschool scheduling tool and came across Homeschool Skedtrack. It took me a few days of playing around with it and watching the video tutorials to really understand how it works, but now that I do I quite like it!

I particularly like it because we are so relaxed that we don't follow a stringent schedule. If we do math one day great, if not that is fine as well. So if I don't check off the math lesson for that day it just moves it over to the next day. It also lets you add in field trips, science experiments, etc so everything is in one place. You can also upload Excel documents into it, which I find very helpful!

Another tool I particularly like is that you can "copy" the same coursework for different children. So with my twins I don't have to retype the entire year if they are doing the same work. I was going to be very annoyed if I had to do everything twice :-)

The only thing at this point that I don't like is that it isn't always intuitive how to use the program. The videos definitely help but it still takes some getting used to. Overall for a free program I am pleasantly surprised with how powerful this scheduler is!