Do you long for more order in your homeschool? Would you like one program where you could keep an assignment calendar for each of your kids, keep track of personal appointments and responsibilities, keep your children’s grades AND produce transcripts?
If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, HomeSchool Office by Lord Heritage may be just the program that you’re looking for.
More about HomeSchool Office
HomeSchool Office was created by two women (daughter and mother), Jennifer Desautels and Joyce E. Hull.
The program focuses on POWER. POWER is an acronym that stands for:
Plan. Parents initially plan for the school year by entering in the subjects that each of their children will cover each day. Each child is assigned a color, so children’s schedules are color-coded. In addition, you can set a time for when they will do what subject. Once the subjects are in the master calendar, you can add daily assignments as well as how long you expect each assignment to take.
Order. The order section is where you can set up a to-do list, set up reminders and integrate your personal and school calendar.
Work. In this section, you and your child will be able to see their calendar. You can also follow daily lessons and manage to-do lists.
Evaluate. This is an important section where you can keep track of attendance, track hours per subject, and maintain grading per subject.
Report. This is where you can generate transcripts, which is so important for high school.
For each subject each day, your child has a number of different options. If he completes the assignment, he can mark it as complete, and a check mark will appear on that subject for the day on the calendar. If he is not able to complete the assignment that day, he can “push” it to the next day. He has the option to push it one day only, or he can push it so all of the future assignments are bumped forward a day. If he wants to work ahead, he can “pull” an assignment from upcoming days.
HomeSchool Office runs $79 per year. For that price, you and all of your children can use the program. In addition, you will receive all updates and unlimited support.
Our Experience Using HomeSchool Office
I cannot say enough good things about this product and company! Originally, I didn’t think this product would be that helpful to us. I saw it more as a product for parents with high schoolers.
How wrong I was!
When our review period first began, I used this program for myself to keep track of Cuddle Bug (Pre-K) and PB & J Girl’s (K) activities. While it did help me stay on track, I was definitely not using the program to its full potential.
About three weeks into the review, I had the brilliant idea of using the program for Bookworm (5th grade). I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier. After all, Bookworm already uses a paper planner. Every Sunday night we sit down together; I tell him his assignments for the week, and he writes them down. I’m not going to lie, this is a bit of an arduous chore.
One Sunday night instead of sitting down with him and having him write his assignments in his paper planner, I imputed all of Bookworm’s assignments for the week in HomeSchool Office. The problem? When Bookworm logged into the program, he couldn’t find any of his assignments. Yikes!
I e-mailed customer service, and they were very helpful. However, when I still couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, Jennifer, one of the founders of the program, offered to call me and walk me through the program step-by-step.
How is that for excellent customer service?! I was impressed.
After a 30 minute coaching session from Jennifer, I realized why I was having difficulty. I hadn’t taken the time to set up the schedule in my parent’s screen. Once I did that, Bookworm could see his assignments and check them off as he completed them.
Bookworm loved having his schedule on the iPad. He liked checking things off as he completed them and seeing the green check marks next to the assignments he completed. I don’t know why, but using the HomeSchool Office planner worked much better for Bookworm than using the paper planner. Even better, he stayed on task more and got his work done faster.
Thank you Lord Heritage!
Strengths of the Program
As you can tell, I’m very impressed with Lord Heritage’s customer service. They answered questions in a very timely manner and were extremely helpful.
I also love how this program can help parents and kids stay on top of their workload. I’m a fairly organized person, but I’m not as organized as I could be. This program helps me step it up a level. I have entered all of Bookworm’s assignments for this quarter, so he and I both know at a glance what has been done and what he needs to do.
I also love that this program includes everything I need to track our homeschooling–attendance, hours worked, assignments done, grades, etc.
I have this subscription for a year thanks to this review, but I intend to continue buying it. I think HomeSchool Office will become even more valuable as my kids get older and their schedules get busier.
Weaknesses of the Program
I didn’t find any weaknesses with the program. I did have trouble when I first tried to set up the program because for some reason, I was unable to see the screen shots that went with the instructions.
However, when I was on my phone chat with Jennifer, she said that she’s working on video instructions for new customers detailing how to set up the program. She’s hoping to have that completed by this summer so parents will have it to use as they set up HomeSchool Office for the upcoming school year. That would be a great addition.
I was one of 80 people to review HomeSchool Office. To read more reviews, click below.
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