HomeSchool Office Review

Between homeschooling, homemaking, activities, blogging, etc. staying on top of things can be tough! I have been looking for a solution to keeping everything better organized and was excited for the opportunity to review HomeSchool Office from Lord Heritage.

HomeSchool Office is an online, cloud based organization system for homeschooling based on the acronym “POWER.” It can be used with any number of students, any curriculum, and in any state. POWER stands for:
Plan
Organize
Work
Evaluate
Report
For our review we received a One-Year HomeSchool Office Membership. I was able to log in and get started right away. At first glance, it can actually be a little daunting. Now that we live in Ohio I want to learn to keep better records because it’s not something I’ve been very good at doing. I have tried my best to set a plan for our homeschool and stay organized, but with three special needs children, my health issues, and my husband’s health issues, it has definitely proven to be challenging. So I think I was hoping for not only a thorough solution, but an easy one as well. For myself, I found there was a learning curve to getting started with HomeSchool Office. Luckily, I found a Quick Set Up Guide in the Support forum!
To get started I first entered our homeschool name and information in the “Home School” Tab. I was then able to add the Educators. I added myself as the Main Home Educator and my husband as the Secondary Home Educator because he is definitely involved in our homeschooling. It even allows detailed information such as subjects taught by the Educator and contact information. Then I added our children and current grade level in the Students section.

Something that is new to me now living in Ohio is reporting to the local School District. HomeSchool Office also allows me to enter the School District Information, which is so nice to have the information right there where I can easily find it.
In the “Team” tab there is also the ability to add resources such as favorite websites, legal information, community resources, testing, etc. I like to keep everything in one place, so I am using this section to add many different homeschooling resources websites. I am still adding to it as we go!
After the Team is all set up, it was time to engage in the POWER acronym starting with Plan. The verse for Plan is Jeremiah 29:11, and I love that this program is based on scripture. In Plan I started with the Subjects tab where I added the subjects for each child. Since our children are young (ages 8, 7, and 4) I opted to keep it simple. Instead of choosing something specific for each subject, I just chose “General,” so, for example, instead of choosing Arts – Arts History, I simply chose Arts – General. I did this with both our 8 and 7 year old who are both working at the 2nd Grade level. After discovering how time intensive set up is, I opted not to create a schedule for our preschooler. I also didn’t find an easy way to set up subjects for him as I would just label them as “General” altogether and not separate them by subject, which isn’t an option.

Something I found exciting about the subjects is that they also offer a “Special Needs” section. I do try to include therapy in our homeschool, so this was a great way to add it in and make sure I do get that time in that they need. I added ADHD for our daughter and PDD-NOS for our son, but you can also just choose General as well.

I have tried to keep everything simple. There is the ability to add so many details when you get more involved in the set up process including specific lesson information, curriculum, grade weighting, etc. Because we change things frequently, I was just going to keep it simple, but it causes problems if you don’t add lesson information. I appreciate the feature, though, but setting up individual lessons is so time intensive, and I have to do it basically every day since the lesson is different each day. I definitely would prefer that I could just check it off as complete as a subject and not be required to add specific lessons. I made up generic lesson names just to get through that step. So for French, I just said “French” for each lesson, but it was still time intensive.
I definitely would use detailed lessons it if our children were older and we were on a more set schedule. I do still plan on trying it out when I’m able. With my health issues, I’ve had to keep things more simple in general, so just having all the subjects and getting them organized nicely in a calendar was already a great improvement!
Next, I set up our school year plan. Something that often limits me is the fact that we homeschool from January to November and take breaks as needed (which is frequent – hence the long school year). Plus, we get to enjoy the holidays and don’t have to “relearn” everything when we start back up in January. At first, I thought this program was going to limit me as well since it does show a general school year calendar. I discovered, though, that by clicking over I could bring up the remaining months and was able to highlight the months I needed. Because I don’t know when our breaks will be, I just highlighted every day from when we started in January to the week before Thanksgiving, and I will add our breaks in when needed.

Once the school year plan was set, I added our Master Schedule. This is where I could take the subjects I added for each child and plug them in to a weekly plan. Because our son and daughter are both learning the same things at the same grade level, I just made one main calendar and kept their colors the same.

In Order (1 Corinthians 14:40), I could integrate my home and school activities, which is really nice to have in one place. It also allowed me to set up reminders and custom lists. Right now I have my To-Do lists and calendars completely separate, so I love that I can add them in right here to my calendar. For events, I set a different color to keep them separate from our homeschool schedule, though I can choose to view just the homeschooling calendar.

In Work (John 17:4) this is where I can view and print individual schedules, which isn’t really a high priority for me because I am definitely a digital person. This is also where I follow the daily lessons and manage my to-do lists. If you have older children, you can provide student access as well. Since our children are young and beginning readers, we don’t have a need to provide them with access yet.

In Evaluate (Matthew 28:20) I can enter grades and attendance. This is helpful because although I don’t have to report how many hours we actually completed, I do have to agree to complete a specific number of hours, and this helps me to keep track of the hours and see where we are not only with homeschooling in general but with each individual subject as well.

In Report (Romans 14:12) this is where I will be able to build my report at the end of the year to be sure I’m complying with state regulations. Because our school year is unconventional, I haven’t yet figured out how I need to generate the report correctly, but I have time until I need to do so! When generating the report you have the option to generate detailed information or a summary. For older students that need a Transcript, it can be generated in Report as well.

Overall, I love the idea of HomeSchool Office. It is based on Scripture, is very thorough, and because it’s on the cloud, you don’t have to worry about losing anything. I’m still not sure it’s the solution for us, though, because it is just so time intensive, and there are no shortcuts. For example, I’d like to be able to click on the subject on the calendar and from there add the time we worked on it and the grade. Rather, each item requires a different step. Part of the appeal was the idea of getting organized and better time management, but it has resulted in more time taken. I will continue to use it and see if I can discover a way to be more efficient on it because I do appreciate all the features.
Many member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew shared their reviews of HomeSchool Office. See what they thought by clicking on the banner below!