HM Review: My Home School Grades

Note: Our family received a free subscription to My Home School Grades for this review. Opinions are our own. No other compensation was involved.

To start with, I have to admit that I find transcripts terrifying and the idea of assigning grades, much less keeping track of them, paralyzing. There's something intimidating about writing it all down. My early homeschool record-keeping took place in fits and starts, books read, narrations, things checked off a list. I can't tell you how many times I started with the best of intentions, only to sputter out a few weeks into the process. If you were to look at my records, you'd wonder about our girls' education.

Standardized test scores say they were/are getting some kind of education. The younger two have tested at the top of the scale over the years. (Youngest's final state-mandated test is coming up next year, and she's very happy to see the end in sight.) Eldest is special needs and always struggled with academics. Frankly, I didn't worry too much about a transcript for her. Just learning as much as possible was a good goal.

Transcripts -- the "love language" of colleges (Lee Binz)

I attended an online seminar in creating transcripts, taught by Lee Binz. One of the things she said that struck me is that transcripts are really the way that you communicate with a college that might be considering your student for admission.

Granted, none of ours are interested in college right now. They hear about massive college debt, for one thing, and people having trouble finding jobs even with college degrees. None of them is interested in being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer at this point in their lives. Don't get me wrong, they're not aimless drifters with no plans for the future. It's just that their plans don't necessarily require four more years of academic studies.

Still, they might choose to go to college someday. Add to that, they have been learning an awful lot over the years, of history, geography, literature, science, and yes, even math. I think they could hold their own against their peers. It seems a disservice, not to document their learning somehow, and portfolios and transcripts are the current way to do that.

What I needed was something easy to use, intuitive, that would lead me gently by the hand despite my intimidation.

Enter My Home School Grades...

Okay, more True Confession time here. I did not volunteer to do this review. (Did you know that oftimes reviewers volunteer/beg/plead/submit requests for review products?) I said I'd help out if another reviewer was needed. I really would have preferred, ostrich-like, to have kept my head buried in the sand for another few months of blissful ignorance.

(Do you know how hard it is to put a transcript together from fading memory?)

Of course, the Lord knew what I needed, even though it was not what I wanted. He knew that I had been slipshod in keeping records, and that putting together a transcript for Middlest to graduate in a couple of years would have been even more agonizing than pulling together her records right now.

When I received the link to My Home School Grades with word that I had been picked to review the program, I dutifully signed up for an account -- easy! -- and started to play around a bit. I entered information for all three of the girls, added a few classes, thought about activities, exited the program, and managed to forget about it until the review deadline was looming.

In the meantime, I took Lee Binz' online transcripts class, which helped a lot with some of my confusion. (Like, how do you record high school level work done earlier than 9th grade? How do you record college-level work done in high school? How do you actually assign credits for work? How do you figure out grades?) Which means, when I finally got back to My Home School Grades I was a little more confident. I added in lots more classes, a whole slew of activities -- volunteering, choir, that sort of thing), even... gasp... assigned grades.

User helps -- such as video tutorials

Mind you, I did all this without even checking out the tutorial videos available on the site. I was able to use the site without the tutorials -- the whole thing is pretty intuitive. However, I found (afterward) that the videos are very helpful and gave me a much better idea of the scope of this simple-seeming program. It's amazing how much you can do!

The tutorials currently available show you how to add a student, a class, or activity, and how to generate a transcript from the information you add. You can watch them at the My Home School Grades website to get a better idea of the program.

Powerful features

For such a simple-seeming program, My Homeschool Grades offers a variety of features. You can keep a record of your child's learning from kindergarten through grade 12 (and beyond, with community college dual enrollment). There are several options for adding a class. The lesson plan option allows you to choose a particular curriculum (in which case lessons are automatically added) or a custom curriculum (which allows you to create your own lesson plan).

As you can see from the figure above, the program allows you to use weighted grading, in an easy, visual format.

You can also add classes that receive an overall letter grade or pass-fail mark, and there's an option for indicating dual-enrollment where college and high school credit are earned at the same time.

Adding activities uses the same method as adding classes -- drop down menus, intuitive visual feel. In this way, you can document volunteer work, extracurricular activities, choir, band, sports, 4H, and more. You can choose to include these on a transcript, or leave them off, but in any event, you have a record of activities on file. 

Transcript creation, at the click of a button

 Well, it's just a little more complicated than that. After all, you have to enter all the information that's going to appear on the transcript. What My Home School Grades does is arrange it all in a professional-looking format. It looks something like this on the screen:

Click the "Print" button to print out a copy. You have the option of adding the graduation date and the student's SSN to the transcript before printing; however, this information is not stored. (I really like that the SSN is not stored!)

Ordering details

My Homeschool Grades is offering a 14-day free trial, so I urge you to check it out for yourself. A lifetime membership is $49.99 and covers all the students in your family. No matter where you are in your homeschool journey, convenient, efficient record-keeping is just a few mouse clicks away.

 

HM Review: Waterproof Bible!

Note: Our family received a copy of the Waterproof Bible like the one pictured here for review. Opinions are our own. No other compensation was involved.

Here is a product that meets a need I didn't even know I had... though I've had thoughts along this line every time we've gone camping. Another thing... I love to read in the bath, but there's no way I'd take my precious, marked-up, Bible into the bathtub, with its leather cover and thin pages. I already know it's not waterproof. When it was fairly new (more than two decades ago now), Eldest was a toddler and took a fancy to the pretty ribbon page marker. She explored everything by putting it in her mouth, and... suffice it to say, the ribbon was not colorfast and left burgundy splotches on the pages.

Compact, but readable

The Waterproof Bible sitting in front of me as I type this doesn't look or feel all that different from other slimline Bibles I've handled. The cover and pages have something of a silky feel. At first glance, the pages seem as thin as the delicate pages in my personal Bible. Granted, what I have here is the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs so it shouldn't be all that bulky anyhow. At 4-1/4" x 7" and a little over half an inch thick, this 342-page softcover is compact enough to fit in my purse. The full Waterproof Bible with all the Old Testament as well is a little larger in all dimensions, and has about twice the number of pages.

The print is small, 7 point, but clear and readable. (The publisher offers a bookmark magnifier in their shop (click on Accessories) if you need one.) The shiny pages might present a little glare if you read in bright sunlight, but we didn't notice a problem with glare when we passed the Bible around during our regular Bible reading times.

Study helps are minimal. There's no concordance, for example, or extensive cross references. I like the footnotes, which include translation notes as well as references when Old Testament passages are quoted, so you can go to the original passage and read it in context while digging deeper.

...but can you write in it?

That was one of my first questions. I mean, if it resists water and mud, surely it's going to resist ink and highlighter? Such a Bible would be handy for camping and reading, but not so easy to interact with.

However, I'm happy to report that you can write on the pages (pencil and ballpoint are recommended) and highlight passages with colored pencil or dry highlighters (you can find dry highlighters in the publisher's shop at the link above). Best of all, the pages don't bleed through! You can highlight or mark on a page without having it affect the text on the other side of the page.

Sturdy!

I held my breath and opened the Waterproof Bible flat -- something I avoid with softcover books, unless they have a "lay flat" binding. I pressed it down for good measure as I read, turned over a few pages, read again, turned to another section, and finally closed the book. I felt like a criminal, a maimer of books... until I examined the back of the spine. There were no tell-tale creases to give mute testimony to my careless handling.

You may laugh at me and call me a book fanatic (I prefer the term bibliophile, sounds so much better, doesn't it?) but I actually trained my children in the fine art of reading paperbacks, cracking them open just enough to be able to read the print, and no farther, and never leaving a book on its face, to avoid breaking the spine. If you see creases on the back of a paperback, it means that eventually pages are going to start falling out. I have no such worries with the Waterproof Bible. I have the feeling it will last a long time, just as its publisher promises.


The Waterproof Bible is available from Bardin & Marsee Publishing and Christian bookstores (there's a "find a retailer" feature at the publisher's website). There are ESV, KJV, NKJV, NIV, and NLT versions, in a variety of cover choices. Full Bible versions are $44.95, New Testament/Psalms/Proverbs versions are $24.95. For an additional $7 you can have your Bible imprinted to personalize it with a name or initials.

 

Thankfulness

Rejoice always,

pray without ceasing,

give thanks in all circumstances;

for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

1 Thess. 5:16-18 ESV

 It's not always the easiest thing to do. Grumbling for some reason is much easier than gratitude. "Counting your curses instead of your blessings" is what we call it around here, or rather, when in the middle of Attitude Adjustment, it's in the form of an admonition to count your blessings, instead of your curses.

I've been pretty grumbly at times today. We need a new roof, and there's water damage in the living room that may or may not come from the old roof. We're hoping that it won't be serious in the end, but we won't know until they tear off the old roof and see what's there to see. I could go on and on, but I won't.

You see, we are so blessed, so very blessed, that we don't even know how blessed we are. How many people are out there with no roof, or dirt floors, or a whole family crammed into a room or two, or not enough to eat? And here we are, grumbling about our not-perfect house, or an annoying sister, or plans that aren't shaping up exactly the way we want them to. Not to mention our own shortcomings, the things that didn't get done today because of our (poor) choices.

No. Not going there. I'm going to concentrate on blessings right now. I can hear the Giant Schnoz enthusiastically gulping her dog food after ignoring it all day. (A little kombucha was all she wanted. Guess she was feeling grumbly, too.) Dinner will be quick and easy tonight -- crepes. Just whip them up in the blender and start frying, one by one, and top with powdered sugar and lemon juice and roll them up. Church meeting tonight to talk about the possibility of a new pastor, after our church has been in limbo for many months.

(Still counting blessings... the interim pastor has been a gift of God, a shepherd who loves the sheep he's been given to guide through a difficult time, who has brought healing with his wise and understanding heart.)

Anyhow, am going to keep on counting those blessings and more, even after I finish up here and post this.

How many blessings can you name today?

Cool!

The last speech and debate qualifier tournament is now officially behind us. There were five qualifiers over the season, and we went to every one. In case you were wondering, the "qualifier" means that if you have a winning record at a tournament, you get an invitation (or qualify) to compete in the regional competition. Middlest and her debate partner qualified four times over, and learned valuable lessons in the tournament where they did not qualify. A winning record, in case you were wondering, is winning at least four out of six debate rounds. There's also a deal where you can win three and lose three and still qualify if the judges give you high points for your speaking skills, but I don't really know how that works.

We traveled all over the region to these tournaments. Well, not quite "all." There wasn't a tournament in California, but there were tournaments in each of the other states in the region. Our shortest drive was about 40 minutes, the longest took the better part of a day.

We were blessed to have "host housing" when we traveled out of town. This is where people open their homes to far-from-home students and their families. Some of the hosts have students who are competing, but this wasn't the case in three of the four homes where we stayed. Some were church friends, some had been involved in speech and debate but their children had graduated, and the last family we stayed with were homeschool graduates themselves, and had competed in speech and debate in the early days of the NCFCA!

Not only do I find homeschool graduates encouraging, I find a lot of them amazing, and this young family fit into that category.

They apologized for the fancy car parked in front of their house. (I hadn't even noticed the car -- in our neighborhood, other people park in front of our house all the time. Makes it hard to find parking sometimes.) They wanted us to know that they weren't the kind of status-seekers who go into big debt to buy an impressive car; they had won the car in a contest.

I've never known somebody who won a car in a contest before. Amazing.

They showed us the ad with them and the car. Not only did they win a car in a contest, but they won a car in a contest in Rolling Stone magazine, and went to the Grammy awards, and were featured in a full-page ad in the magazine. The photo they submitted for the contest was on their refrigerator, and I can see why it caught editors' attention: The family business is zipline gear, and their Christmas card photo (the one on the fridge) shows the mom dangling upside down from a zipline, calmly kissing her hubby while the little kids hang around in helmets and zipline harnesses (not literally hanging from the zipline, I mean, just casually standing around looking preschool cool).

Now, we were told repeatedly that host families only provide a spot to sleep. You might very likely have to bring your own sleeping bags and be prepared to camp out on the floor, or a sofa, or a blow-up mattress. Host families might provide refrigerator space (we always asked for this as we are gluten free) but they don't, as a rule (this was emphasized to us when we were learning about the host housing option), provide any meals.

These guys had been to tournaments; they knew what we were facing: grueling 14-hour days, a 40 minute drive from their house to the school where the tournament was held, leaving before 7 and getting back late. The mom baked a huge batch of gf muffins the day we arrived, one big bowl of dairy-free and one big bowl with dairy. She used a Pamela's mix as a base for her muffin recipe. I'd never eaten Pamela's products before. Let me tell you, those muffins were delicious. She also set up a French press before she went to bed each night, and a teakettle full of water waited on the stove when I got up, which meant all I had to do was turn on the stove on my way to the bathtub, and pour the boiling water into the French press on my way back to the spare room where we were bunking in. Coffee and muffins and even yogurt for breakfast, perfect for a quick starter.

They also fed us dinner after our long drive to get there, the day before the tournament began. What a treat! It was good, too, roast chicken and cottage potatoes and fresh green beans, pretty similar to the way we cook at our house. They have gluten-free family members as well, so they understood our constraints and concerns.

Oh, and that spare room? No sleeping on the floor, no, the two girls shared a futon and we parents had an inflated mattress, and our host family provided bedding and towels, what luxury!

Probably the best part of our stay were the conversations. The evening we arrived, we talked over chocolate and tea, a wide range of subjects, from ziplines to adventure movies to literature to homeschooling. The talk was lively and interesting -- and so was the early morning conversation I enjoyed with the little ones as I poured out the coffee, peeled hard-boiled eggs and set out muffins on plates. With Youngest being 14, I miss those childish insights in the morning. (Of course, when I was a younger mom, I didn't really appreciate them, being desperate for more sleep and wondering just how a child who'd been up and singing in her bed at midnight could be so bright and chatty at six a.m....)

Anyhow, it was a good trip, and now I'm in full-blown catch-up mode. So I'm going to have to cut this off short today. Hope to see you again in a day or two! Thanks for listening.

HM Review: Free Printable Blog Planner from Homeschool Creations

Here's my very first review for the Mosaic Reviews Team, from Homeschool Mosaics. Members of the review team were given a list of free blog planners to choose from. It was a difficult choice! I might have chosen a one-page planner that sort of hit the highlights, or a blog planner that had a nice introduction to blogging and a mini-lesson on setting priorities.

But the Free Printable Blog Planner from Homeschool Creations really spoke to me. I almost passed it by, at first glance. I found 63 planner pages to be overwhelming. I barely have enough time to keep up a blog as it is... and yet, as I perused the pages I found so much practical help that I kept reading. I can also reassure you that you don't really get 63 unique pages to agonize over. Much of the planner is made up of the same few pages, 12 copies of each, so that if you print the planner and bind it, it'll be good for a whole year.

Anyone can be a hit-or-miss blogger. I've done it for years, but I'm trying to get more methodical in this endeavor, as in many others. However, with blogging, as with so many other things, a little planning goes a long, long way. Now if I could just get a little ahead on my blog posts, so that they could be automatically scheduled and just, plunk! -- sort of post themselves. That takes time. I've gotten better at planning, but too often lately I've been thrown off my blog plan by an unexpected curve ball, like coming down with a cold, or a too-busy schedule.

With a blog planner, though, I can think through the coming days and weeks, write down themes and ideas, and actually have a target to shoot at. It's so much better than sitting down at the keyboard, looking at that blank page, and thinking in a panic, "I have to blog something!"

So what do you get in this blog planner? There's a pretty cover sheet, a link to a blog post where the author shows how she uses her planner (I always find this kind of thing to be very helpful, as I tend to be seized by paralysis when confronted with a blank form), and a 2013 year-at-a-glance calendar. For each month, there's a blank monthly calendar, with an area to record a focus (or eleven) for the month; a page to document reviews, giveaways, notes, and contact information; and two pages of weekly calendars with room for a to-do list for each week. (I haven't used the weekly calendars yet, but I can see how they would be useful as I ease into regular blogging.)

Additional planning helps include pages that will help you keep track of blog statistics, websites and passwords, affiliate information, Twitter hashtags, linkups, an income and expense sheet, and (for the serious blogger whose blog is her business) even a mileage tracker.

A couple of "Notes in my head" pages round out the planner -- honestly, these two pages are the ones that I've found most useful. Now I'm keeping my notes in one place, rather than stuck on sticky notes that end up who-knows where.

The planner is done in a pretty pastel pink-and-green color scheme. It looks really nice on the screen. Mine is printed out in grayscale for the sake of my budget, but it still works.

You can print the planner and bind it, or punch the pages and put it in a separate section of a planning notebook, or even break out the monthly and weekly pages and incorporate them among your homeschool/home planning pages. It's a versatile format!

You can download your own copy of the planner at the link above. It's free!

Gluten free? Be careful...

While perusing magazines in the orthodontist's waiting room yesterday (emergency appointment; Youngest has been miserable with the latest adjustment last week, scarcely able to eat -- doing much better today, am thankful to say!), I picked up the March issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray.

I subscribe to very few magazines, but I'll occasionally pick up an issue of Rachel Ray's cooking magazine at the store, especially if I'm hungry, going through the checkout line, and the recipes look good. (Musical scrap of an old advertisement floats through my distractible brain: Don't shop when you're hungry! No! No! No!)

Back to my train of thought. The March issue looked good, certainly, and I may well seek it out next time I'm grocery shopping, and snap it up. I adapt some of the gluten-containing recipes, and others are naturally gluten-free.

Imagine how pleased I was to see an article for a buffet meal for friends that was gluten free and allergy friendly!

In the old, carefree days, before we discovered severe gluten sensitivities in some of our family members, I might have cooked up this menu and invited gluten free friends to dine, blithely assuring them that the magazine said it was safe for them to eat, as the recipes were gluten free. (Thankfully, our celiac friends are very careful and don't just take people's word for it...)

You might think Chicken Cordon Bleu rolled in a cornflake crust would be gluten free, wouldn't you? After all, a lot of GF people can eat corn products, like corn tortillas or cornstarch. Cornflakes ought to be a no-brainer, right?

Unfortunately, no. When I cleared out all the gluten-containing foods from the pantry (to keep our GF family members safer, from cross-contamination and accidental self-poisoning) and removed these foods from my shopping list, my beloved cornflakes had to go. (There's nothing better in berry season, than cornflakes with fresh-picked blueberries and some lovely raw honey drizzled over it all...)

On rare occasions, I will still buy cornflakes in boxes that are marked "gluten free," but they cost more than my old standby brand, so it's a rare treat. Usually in blueberry season.

The problem with a lot of cereals seems to be the malt flavoring, which comes from barley, which contains gluten. This has, sadly, reduced the list of cereals we can use. Former favorites like Rice Krispies and Kellogg's Corn Flakes are off our list. (Rice and Corn Chex cereals are a decent substitute, though they don't make very good "Rice Krispie Treats" as far as we're concerned.)

If you decide to make a gluten free meal, and you're new to GF cooking, be very careful. Read the ingredients list. Look at the labels on the ingredients for the words "gluten free." Ask an experienced GF friend for help in maneuvering through the maze of ingredients that are out there. Don't just assume something is safe to eat because a recipe claims it's safe.

For more information on finding gluten free cornflakes, check out this article at about.com.

Absence makes the heart grow... colder?

Children are a blessing and a gift from the LORD.

(Psalm 127:3, CEV)

I always wince when I hear a mom with children "in school" (as opposed to a homeschooling mom) express relief that vacation time is almost over and pretty soon the kids will be back in school. It's especially heart-wrenching when said kids are within earshot. Sort of a Mom doesn't really want me around moment.

To see the look of hurt on the child's face... or worse, not to see it, because it's no big deal, it's just something Mom says all the time, well, it makes me sad for the child, and for the Mom, who is missing out on something precious.

Been there. (In the immortal words of internet usage) Done that.

Once upon a time, when Eldest was little, I was a working-outside-the-home mom. We had daycare, in the earliest years, but when a slightly larger toddler broke our toddler's thumb, we looked for another arrangement, and found a babysitter who only took in one other child at the time. She turned out to be (at the time) a better mom than I was -- she provided welcome, a scheduled, predictable day, loving arms, and time. Lots of time.

(I didn't know a whole lot about mothering, having grown up last of a fair-sized family and not been around babies and toddlers. I've learned a lot since then, but how I wish I'd known a motherly mentor in those early years.)

To get back to the topic absence and fondness, in my experience as a working mother, absence did not make the heart grow fonder, as in the old saw. I loved my work, I really did, and while it was with reluctance I first left our daughter to go back to the workplace, I soon got used to it, soon grew to love what I did, giving a lot of myself to teaching and as a consequence, having little left over when it was time to pick up our daughter, head home, get dinner on the table, take care of a few chores, read a bedtime story, go to bed myself, and then get up and do it all again.

(I read recently in a Facebook discussion thread that some daycares or babysitters charge $5 a minute for parents who are late to pick up their child. I may be adding 2+2 and getting 5, but that tells me there's a problem, where parents are either too busy to pick up a child on time, or else they're reluctant, or both. I can relate.)

Forget quality time. Eldest was getting the dregs. I was tired, not as patient with a toddler as I later learned to be with our younger two. (But that's another story.) Any quality time Eldest got was with our lovely and loving babysitter. (I'm so sorry to have to admit this.)

I discovered a curious fact: The less I was with our daughter, the less I wanted to be with her. On the other hand, when the work schedule lightened up (I taught when a weeklong or two-week class was scheduled, and sometimes I would have a week off if I wasn't scheduled), I'd spend much more time with our daughter -- days in a row -- and the more time I spent with her, the more I wanted to spend time with her.

Since we began homeschooling, almost 20 years ago now, I've found that I really enjoy our children. The more time we spend together, the more I get to know them, the more I know I'm going to miss them when it's finally time for them to leave the nest. Part of it is that we have quantity time, which makes grasping that elusive "quality time" more likely. Part of it is character development and discipline. Our children have learned how to get along with all kinds of people, of all ages, including (for the most part) their parents. Part of it is that we've had time to teach them what's important, and we're pretty much on the same page, though they are developing their own mindsets, their own apologia for what they believe, not just parroting back what we've tried to live in front of and alongside them.

Do you love your children? Do you really love them? Most parents would answer that question with a thoughtful or maybe indignant, Of course! 

Do you like them?

Do you like being with them?

If you don't, maybe this is a point to ponder further.

This is not to denigrate "working mothers" or make you feel guilty if you are one. I'm just suggesting you examine your attitude, if it's anything like mine was when our eldest was a toddler. The years go by so fast, childhood is just a blink of an eye, and soon they're all grown up and you'll be wondering what happened to the time. Eldest will soon turn 30. I look at young mothers sometimes, and wish I could go back. But I can't.

At the time, I didn't have a choice about working, and so I sympathize with you if you're in the same boat. I'm glad that things changed for us (some of it involving circumstances, some a change of heart, but that's another story). It's been a struggle to stay at home, these past two decades. There are a lot of things we might have done with a second income, a lot of things we might be able to do now, in fact, that we can't. Even some important things, like a new roof. (Insert Han Solo imitation here, peering anxiously at the ceiling: Hear me, baby? Hold together!)

But it's been worth it. Totally.

I wish for you the same joy and delight.