alternative to CM Organizer?

It won’t show up on the days it is NOT scheduled on.  If you want them to show up the whole week, you will need to enter all the days like T, W, TH, F and click the save changes button. 

To have the others show up the next week, you could have them begin after you finish the others. To do that, you would click on the button “Start After”. It will allow you type there, but you can click on the arrow on the right side of line and it will bring up all the books you’ve scheduled.  You can click on the appropriate title and save it.  Then when you finish the first set would automatically show up. You can do this as many times as you need to. 

I did it with our chosen literature books for the year. As we finish one resource, it will automatically bring up the next one I put in line.

Does this make sense?

On the Wishlist is to have a “Use With” option that you can setup with specific chapters of another resource – so In theory you could say to schedule a book to start With Chapter 2 of your history spine…..  but at the moment it is on the wishlist.

Thinking on it – I would make a set of Fake Resources…  What you call them might be Week numbers, or Section Names, or whatever makes sense to you.    I’d schedule them to follow one after another – and schedule the books to start after it.   

So if week numbers makes sense it might look like this.

Resource – “Week 1” – scheduled Fridays (as a Teacher Resource – makes it easy to remove from reports) – starts “now”

Resource – “Week 2” – Scheduled Fridays – starts after “Week 1”

Resource ‘ “Boy of Pyramids” – Scheduled T-Friday – starts after “Week 1”

Resource – “Week 3” – starts after “Week 2”

Resource – “Cat of Ba……” – starts after “Week 2”

Resource – some other egyptian book – starts after “Week 2”

etc….

Then when you are done the week, you mark it as done, and the next list of books will come up in the plan.

If you wanted to do it by Section Names, it would be similar….  so something like…

Resource – “Introduction” – scheduled Fridays (as a Teacher Resource – makes it easy to remove from reports) – starts “now”

Resource – “Egyptians” – Scheduled Fridays – starts after “Introduction”

Resource ‘ “Boy of Pyramids” – Scheduled T-Friday – starts after “Introduction”

Resource – “More about Egyptians” – starts after “Egyptians”

Resource – “Cat of Ba……” – starts after “Egyptians”

Resource – some other egyptian book – starts after “Egyptians”

Resource – “Introduction to the Greeks” – Starts after “More about Egyptians”

Resource – “Greek Lives and other made up books” – Starts after “More about Egyptians”

I hope that made sense.   It is some extra work – sure wish that wishlist feature was done!

etc….

In my previous post, I was assuming that you would have the same number of books every week. You most likely won’t, so eawerner is right.  

What I really do for history is take my spine or guide and just jot the books I want to read it with it. That guide or spine is listed daily in the Organizer.

Then I put in all my books in the Organizer for Saturday. As I am using the spine or guide daily, I read the corresponding book.  When I am marking our progress each day, I simply open the ‘resources not used today’ tab and click on the book and mark what we did.  

I don’t waste ink, I don’t forget a resource, but I can add it in when it fits in the order I need it to. It also saves the frustration of trying to make a huge schedule on the Organizer that might need tweaking frequently.

Yes, scheduling things for Saturday or Sunday is a trick I use often too, when I’m not quite sure when I’ll need it.

And as I’m using AO this year, I’ve come up with a few different things to do their non-weekly scheduled items…  and it is even more fun now that my children want to do their readings on whatever day they want instead of scheduled on a particular day….   These are a couple of circumstances that take a bit more work to do on the Organizer (as it isn’t how it was designed) – but is still worth it for me!

Even though, where I live, we don’t need to keep records (a simple portfolio is recommended in case the child needs to go back to school…) – my dh insisted I track what we did.  I tried a few ways and means pre-organizer – and was very inconsistant.  (I tried various programs, spreadsheets, etc….     although if put in that place again I do like the TofC methods that have been shown here.)  Since using the organizer, I find that I actually mark most of the stuff that we do as done (the kdis do life-type-stuff that haven’t made it in… like I haven’t written in EVERY book they read on their own time, etc…)  And my dh loves the reports at the end of the year.   

Shannon, I am not quite sure I completely understood your question, but it looks like you’ve gotten some good feedback. If you’re scheduling a resource to be “Use With” you can only schedule one at a time. However, you could schedule the supplemental resources you’re referring to on their own and then just pick which day(s) you want to use them.

I use the SCM history/geo/Bible modules, and I only schedule the Family Handbook. I don’t schedule the recommended resources that go along with it (Boy of the Pyramids, Cleopatra, etc.) that are Family Resources. For children who are reading independently and narrating from recommended books, I do schedule those resources for that specific child. So for example, we are in Module 3 this year. Detectives in Togas is a book that SCM recommends for grades 4-6 as independent reading, but Oxford First Ancient History is recommended as a Family resource. So, I didn’t put Oxford into the Organizer because in my mind, it falls under the Module 3 resource in our Family subjects. But I did schedule Detectives in Togas for my son since it was a book he was reading on his own, and I wanted it to not only remind me to have him read it, but also keep a record of his reading it. Make sense?

We don’t check out many books from the library any more because I prefer to buy our books. But when we did check out books, scheduled a “Library Bundle”. This was actually Sonya’s suggestion. In the notes section, I listed the titles of the books that were in that bundle (usually just leisure reading). Any time those books were read, I clicked on “Worked On”, until the day I took them back to the library, then I clicked “Finished”. Maybe that could help you with some of your supplemental resources as well. They wouldn’t be listed individually, but you would have that reminder (daily or once a week, whenever you scheduled them) and a record that you or the kids read them.

I don’t find paper systems helpful for long-term records either. You end up with stacks and stacks of papers that you’re toting around for years, and if any gets lost or torn or if the house burns down, you’re in a pickle. I hope you’re finding the Organizer more helpful now!

Blessings,

Lindsey

We’re about ready to roll out some big upgrades that are completely behind the scenes that we were not even going to mention. 

Ah, but now you’ve mentioned it!   😉

Unfortunately, each time you schedule the same resource it shows up with the same title in the menu. I believe they are in the order that they are scheduled, so you could figure it out that way.

It would be great if we could display more information in that menu to differentiate them. This has us now discussing ways we could make that better. Any input is welcome.