by I was given free access to the service for review purposes as well as compensation for my time. All opinions expressed are my own.
What homeschool mom hasn't stressed about record keeping and eventually transcripts! What all do I record? How specific should it be? What should a transcript even look like? It is certainly stress-inducing. Plus you have the paper trail that comes with it, and how long do you need to hold on to all of it?
What if you could keep records online and have a transcript instantly? That would be reduce stress for sure. Homeschool Records allows you to do just that!
Homeschool Records is a program designed by a retired homeschool mom just for homeschool moms. So while it may not be the flashiest program you've seen, it is straight forward and easy to use. I'll take user friendly any day over flashy!
Homeschool Records is Transcripts PLUS!
- Transcripts
- Attendance Log
- Hours of Instruction
- Reading Log
- Resume
Transcripts are a given of course; that is the main worry of the homeschooling high school parent. Making a transcript with Homeschool Records is easy. You add the class taken, the semester taken, the grade, plus any notes you want to appear on the transcript, and it adds the course. It does offer the option to add weighted grades to your transcript too without you having to calculate. The program gives you the option of adding the curriculum used, a course description, and assessments used for your own records as well.
.png "Homeschool Records keeps track of courses.")
With Homeschool Records you also have to option of sending your high schooler's transcript directly to colleges.
.png "Homeschool Records creates high school transcripts.")
The Homeschool Records Program has an attendance log as well where you can mark the days your child does school work. This is way easier than me going through my records to count up days!
There is another section where you can put in hours of instruction. You simply input how many hours of schoolwork your child did that day. It can be a decimal number too which is good as we don't always end on an hour.
.png "Homeschool Records keeps track of instructional hours.")
Another record you can create with Homeschool Records is a complete Reading Log. You can track all the books your high schooler reads for school or pleasure along with page numbers and ISBN, and with a click you can have a printable report for your records.
One record I had not thought to track for my high schoolers before now was volunteer hours or other things you might put on a resume (awards, work experience, special workshops, etc). This is very useful as most kids don't think about remembering dates or hours put into a project either, so when it comes to making a resume, it is all right there. Even better, Homeschool Records will put it together in a handy resume form.
.png "Homeschool Records creates high school resumes.")
The only drawback I can see is that Homeschool Records only works for high school grades. Grade 8 is included as many kids do high schoolwork in eighth grade, but nothing before that. For the most part, you don't need a transcript prior to high school, so this is not an issue. For those kids who participate in public school sports or other activities that may require one, it would be useful.
Benefits of Online Homeschool Records
- Everything in one place
- No giant planners to keep track of
- Easy
With Homeschool Records all the information your homeschooled high schooler needs is in one place. No searching through totes for past planners to create a reading log or figure hours of instruction. No need to forget exactly what curriculum you used for which subject each year. It is all right there online. And if you lose something, you can quickly print a new one!
You also won't have to hunt through your Google Docs to find various records. I really thought I was being organized when I started tracking stuff on there, but I still lose stuff. Having things in one place is very good for those of us that are less than organized.
So much less paper. Tracking everything by hand is comforting to me, but even I can see that a lot more paper is used when physically writing out my kids reading logs or tracking their instructional hours than just entering it and printing as needed.
It really is easy. Like I mentioned before, the program is straight forward and user friendly. There is literally nothing special you need to do to create your reports. You enter the information, head to the report page, and click the report you want to print. There are a couple options for the appearance of the transcript, but that preference is based on what the colleges you are looking at want to see.
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