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Can I choose the date?
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I am putting everything in for the fall. When I go to Daily plan, nothing shows because I am scheduling for September. Is there a way to see September? I’d like to see how it is going to work, what it will show me with the info I provided.
Thanks!
As far as I know, there is no way to see a later date like that. I do find that it can be a bit frustrating when working out the fall plans.
If you are still working out how the organizer works, I’d make up a pretend student, and assign him/her some things now and try it out.
hope that helps!
Suzukimom is correct; you can’t see that far ahead. You can only see the days in your scheduler (or once you get there, the next day’s schedule). You can look at the scheduler page and see the days you have things on to see if there’s an imbalance. I’ve done that before. So go to your scheduler page and write down everything you have for Monday (for example) and write down those things that you are starting with together (somethings start after you’ve finished others) for each student. That should give you a good idea; you could do that for every day.
The best way to manage this is to have a written daily schedule written out for each student (including Family). I use the free weekly schedule template to write this down. I use the 5-Step plan from Sonya when scheduling, so I have the Big Picture down to the daily written out on paper before I even start to put things into the Organzer, otherwise it can easily get imbalanced.
HTH,
Rachel
Tell us a little about how seeing this on the daily plan would work better for you than what you can see in the scheduler. I’d like to understand the goal a little better to see if there is a good solution to meet the need, possibly in other ways.
Doug, the main problem I see is that to figure out if you have too much planned for one day and not enough another using the scheduler, you pretty much need to look down the whole list of books in all the subjects, looking at each day seperately, seeing how many things you have listed for each day…. and while doing that, keeping in mind things that are in the schedule, but won’t be being done yet (starting at a later day, or starting when another resource is done.
If you haven’t planned out carefully which resources/subjects are being done on which days before you enter them into the scheduler (either with your own method, or using the Planning your CM education) – it can be hard to figure out exactly what you are doing each day after the fact.
Even a simple filter on the side (like you have to just see one student at a time) for each weekday that you could use AS WELL as the student filter would help some.
Ideally, as a very visual person, the grid schedule that shows the week in a very visual form would be even more helpful, but harder for you to implement.
Hope that helps?
Right, I’m a very visual person. So while planning for the fall, I am trying to schedule things, and there is no way to see what I’ve scheduled as a sample day. Does that make sense? Well, unless I change all the dates to say now, then change them back. But I still can only see today and tomorrow.
So say I schedule everything. Math, Copywork, Literature, Science, etc. and I think I have everything planned out nicely. I can’t “see” what the first day in September will look like, until September. So if I don’t write it all out in addition to the organizer, I may not realize that “oops! I planned entirely too much on Mondays!!”
I do realize that the organizer is not made to be able to see a week at a time, or any advance because it goes with life. But to me, I get panicky not being able to see. 🙂 I want to see what a general idea of what I will be doing is. And then if we miss a day, the plan just moves on back a day.
I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but if I’m going to pay for a planner, I don’t want to have to write it out on another form to see my plan, you know what I mean? I have to say, I am loving the other features (book finder, being able to say if it is completed or not, being able to list chapters, etc) but that one feature of not being able to look ahead is enough for me to not use it.
I just started using the sceduler and was frustrated that I could only see 1 day ahead-and that’s only if it isn’t a weekend. I would at least like to be able to see my week.
The big challenge is that the CM Organizer is a “what’s next” planner rather than a calendar-based planner. The nice part of that is that you’re not tied to the calendar and everything adjusts to your pace, but it does make it hard to see what’s ahead on a particular date.
For example, you might do two chapters of a history book per day on Tuesdays and Thursdays but only one chapter of math each week spread out over Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We don’t know the pace that you will use each resource so we can’t accurately predict your schedule. The problem gets even more challenging when you add in our totally unique feature of scheduling a resource to be used with or used after another resource, which don’t even have a starting date.
We’ve thought about adding the ability to specify your pace but we’ve avoided it for two reasons. It’s adds one more thing you have to enter for every resources. And if you change how many chapters of a particular resource you actually do then it throws off your schedule anyway. The only solution we can see to that is to become more rigid and date based, which departs from the core feature of the Organizer in that it flexes with real life. There are other date-oriented planners out there and we really don’t want to give up our unique advantages and be like them.
That said, we could probably tell you that you have history scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays and Math for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We do have it on our wishlist to build a report that gives you a subject grid showing what you have scheduled for each day of the week. It could be similar to what we describe in our week at a glance video. That at least gives you a feel for the density of your schedule each day.
Back to the problem of how do I see my schedule for September…
Let’s say you have History Resource A and Math Resource A scheduled and active right now. Then you plan ahead and schedule History Resource B and Science Resource A to start September 1. You also schedule History Resource C to start after History Resource B is finished.
Let’s say we made it so you could roll the date forward to see your plan.
If you set it to September 1 you would see History Resource B and Science Resource A since they were scheduled to begin on that day. You would not be able to see History Resource C no matter how far you rolled the date ahead because it doesn’t start until History Resource B is finished, and it’s not completed yet. In addition, you would probably see History Resource A and Math Resource A mixed into the plan because those are still active and not finished. Though I suppose we could let you filter to show only resource scheduled to start after a certain date.
It takes a lot of behind the scenes work to keep the Organizer simple.
Does any of that make sense? Is there anything in there that you see that would actually be useful given the constraints? Anyone have other ideas we haven’t though of yet?
Thanks for the great feedback and helping us think through this! We love getting your input on how to make the Organizer even better.
I have to confess to loving the Organizer just the way it is.
However, I’m also a visual person and I know what you mean about liking to see if there is too much on a day. I do have a solution to propose.When I am getting ready to plan what to do on what days, I take a big stack of index cards. I use one color for things we all do as a family, and then one color for each child for each child’s independent work. I make five cards if it is something we do every day (math) two or three cards if we’ll be doing it two or three times a week (like maybe history or science for my younger kids) and one card if we’ll be doing it once a week (picture study). Then I get down on the floor with my nice stack of cards and arrange them until I am happy with the arrangement. Then I write down on a paper block schedule what I decided to do each day. I do this before I enter information on my official “planning” forms and BEFORE I put information into the Organizer. It has worked very well for us. I occasionally need to move something during the year, but in all this works very well–allows me to see exactly what each day is going to look like, and then I still get the flexibility I love about the Organizer. It’s also simple, cheap and low-tech.
I don’t consider doing what I do to take away from the Organizer. I don’t EXPECT the Organizer to do the work of balancing my day for me–that’s MY job. It just helps me know what to do each day and keeps the records for me. So writing it down on a piece of paper first is actually to me a completely separate step, and a necessary one before I even begin working on the Organizer. I kind of do the same thing with a paper calendar and no index cards. (Aren’t you the one who makes a box for each kid, with dividers for each day and puts the cards in each divider so the kids just pull out their assignments fo each day one card at a time? I thought that was pretty smart for multi-kid families – look at all the paper I’d save just in a week!)
I made a blank table in Word that has six columns and a ton of rows down the page. The first column is labeled with the names of the students: Family (scroll down a bunch of rows) DD (scroll down a bunch of rows) etc…thru all the kids. Then I labeled the rest of the columns M-F. In pencil I start putting our schedule in for all subjects, (ex Family: Bible on MWF, geography on T, history on Th, additional history reading in appropriate students.) I do this with all the subjects that I want to teach this term. Then I sort the resources I’ve choosen into the appropriate piles (Family, dd, dd, etc) and using my overview of our term I am able to use the Organizer to schedule our term. Then I put the schedule on the fridge as an overview for the kids who ask what are we doing today before we have their lists out, and on my desk where I can see it as we are adding things in throughout the term. It is a general schedule and I may tweak it to fit the Module or what ever, but it is so simple to keep everything straight this way. I have used it when we weren’t able to print individual lists from the organizer as well to keep us going. =)
I know that doesn’t solve anyone’s issues with hard calanders and other techie stuff, but it is easy to see at a glance =) I think that doing this ehances my use of the organizer because I am not swearing at it or myself because I messed it up (alright, not swearing, but ykwim) =) – and I am more efficent with my time on the computer this way.
@ourjourney – and I tip my hat off to you for already having it together for September! Way to go! I am still making decisions and collecting things… =)
I am thinking maybe I am just too new to the organizer to see how it works. 🙂 But yes, I think what you are saying (showing a general idea of what subjects we are doing on what days) would be fantastic.
Again, hoping this doesn’t come off as rude because I have a hard time wording online! 🙂 But how do you guys use the planner? If you aren’t using it to give you an overview of planning, and just day to day, what do you use it for? Do you just use it to check off subjects each day? If you are using something like note cards, or a word document, (to me) it defeats the purpose of this organizer?
Maybe I should say what *I* thought the planner was going to be, so that you guys can tell me where I am going wrong.
I thought that I’d first go in and add my resources (Saxon math 1, outdoor secrets, english for the thoughtful child, etc). Once those were added in, I’d schedule them, so I’d have math MTWHF, outdoor secrets T/H, etc. I’d of course designate it to the child or family (we only have one child in school currently).
Then, after I got my resources in and scheduled, I thought that it would pretty much break it down day by day for me. For example, when you schedule Outdoor Secrets, it might say there are something like 50 lessons that we would do one a day, 2 times a week. So I thought I’d be able to go to my planner and see my week kind of tentatively. So it would say for Monday: Math – Saxon lesson 1, Literature – Charlottes Web chapter 1…
Does that make sense? I was somewhat hoping it would help me plan without me having to input everything in each day, and erase when we miss a day, it would just move to the next day. But without being able to see the days ahead, or like I said, September or a week at a glance, I am having a hard time using it.
Maybe there could be a possibility of having a choice in the future? So you could choose from a calendar based what’s next OR a what’s next only like it is now. I do like the capability of it bumping it to the next thing, and being able to plan something to start after this book is finished! I can imagine how much goes into the creation of this organizer, so please don’t think I would expect a miracle overnight, but maybe something to think about 🙂
I’m new to homeschooling, which is why I am set up for September already! LOL How long has this organizer been available?
BTW, I am an organization junkie, so I actually *do* have it all mapped out on paper, but was playing with the organizer as well as other organizers to see how it would work! hehee
Hmm. Well, I find it easiest to enter and schedule the resources at the same time. I first get out my books, set what I want to accomplish, decide how many days a week I want to spend on each item, and then do the index card scheduling. THEN I enter everything into the Organizer, scheduling the resources as I go. Since this doesn’t take very long, I do it in the weeks leading up to school. I usually do the resources that are already IN the system first, then take an afternoon and add in the ones that I need to do the whole thing myself; fortunately these seem to get fewer as we go since there are now so many books in the system. I usually do this in August. I do set my beginning dates as early August, even if we are not going to officially start yet, but that way I can see that I did everything correctly and didn’t mess up since I can see what is supposed to be on Monday, for example.
So, yes, when you do log in on Monday morning, you get entries for each subject for that day. Have you watched the videos? So you do get “Math, Saxon, Chapter 1” If you work on it, then the next time you have math scheduled, it will still show “Math, Saxon, Chapter 1” If you finish it, then the next time it says Chapter 2. It also shows each daily assignment, but they are not “scheduled” exactly, at least not how I think of them. For instance, they do not show up on the daily assignment list in the order that we do them. That’s why I need one handy paper schedule, it is kept in the front of my journal. With several children, it is especially necessary that I space out the work so that they all don’t need me at the same time! Or that they do not all need on the computer at the same time (we have only two, and only one hooked up to a printer). So my paper schedule is my week-at-a-glance, and my personal daily sanity saver. The Organizer saves me from having to re-enter assignments, erase or paste them elsewhere when life happens, keeps great records for me so I don’t have to, and generally makes my life so much easier. My kids are all old enough now that they do their work, narrate or show me as necessary, and update what they’ve done with notes into the computer.
So you won’t need to input everything in each day, and it will just move unfinished assignments to the next day, but it really can’t do BOTH that, AND also show you exactly what chapters will be done all week long, because no one, least of all the computer, actually knows what you will get done on Monday, and on Tuesday, etc. Since I don’t know this myself, I can’t expect the computer to know it! LOL I consider my Organizer schedule my “hoped-for” outcome for the week, but, um, well, life happens. Kids get sick, they suddenly forget how to do derivatives and have to back up and cover it again, they run out of time, they procrastinate and put off cutting up that frog, moms overschedule and never make it to history that day, grandparents show up, water pipes burst, neighbors fall and need help, the family has to stop and pack up 300 Operation Santa boxes, etc.
And when you get back, the Organizer tells you exactly where to pick up again.This is a very helpful discussion! Here are some of my thoughts to add into the mix.
how do you guys use the planner? If you aren’t using it to give you an overview of planning, and just day to day, what do you use it for?
I use it like a Pez dispenser.
Once I figure out all the resources I’m going to use and how I want to spread them throughout the year, I determine which days of the week I want to do each subject. Then I plug all that info into the Organizer, and it feeds it to me one day at a time, making any adjustments automatically as I go along.I also use it like a bookmark. I do most of my planning off-line, and the Organizer is my automatic “bookmark” to keep track of where I am in each resource on each day. Plus, it generates an automatic record of everything we do and compiles those records in a variety of reports. I’ve blessed the reports many times.
One of my dreams for the Organizer is to have it create a Weekly Schedule as I enter my resources, showing me which subjects I have scheduled for which days of the week. That feature is on the wish list but has to sit patiently while we get a couple other important features up and running first.
It does do what you want – it just doesn’t give the visual week overview… it just gives you todays (or tomorrows) assignments….
So you put in the resources and say which days they are used… then it tells you what you are doing.
So my daughter’s to-do list, made from the organizer, for today says…
– Bible
Old Testament – Story 20 “The Brothers – Genesis…….(and the information I put in, including the references)
Scripture Mastery – Scripture 10 “John 17:3”
– Copywork
Peterson Directed Handwriting Step 1 – Lesson 5, “Sharp Top”
– Foreign Language
New Testament Stories (German) – Story 31 “Jesys heilt einen Taubstummen”
– Geography
Thirty-Three Multicultural Tales to Tell – Story 23 “Little Jack & Lazy John” (France)
– Math
MEP Math 1b 0 Lesson 117, “Additions to 13”
– Music
Lessons Suzuki Violin Book 1 – Song 10 “Allegretto”
Practice Violin – Month 11 “May”
Step by Step, My First Note Reading Book – Section 6 “Tunes on the A string”
– Science
Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Book 1 – Chapter 18 “Butterflies”
And this is nicely printed out on a sheet she puts in her planner. Things are either marked as done, or worked on.
HOWEVER, today was such a beautiful day, we declared a “Wild Day” and went to the provincial park (and saw a wild turkey with her chicks) and had a picnic.
So – I will go in the organizer, show the items not normally scheduled for today, and indicate that we did a nature study. The violin lessons are group lessons this evening, so that will be mared as Worked On (as she hasn’t passed the song yet…) and I will just ignore the rest of the items for today. Tomorrow, with me not doing anything else, it will have the same bible story listed, same scripture mastery, same copywork, and same math and science. (we do those daily.) It will show her literature book chapter, or whatever else we do on Wednesdays. Next time we have geography scheduled, etc… it will show these things, as we haven’t done them yet.
Really, the organizer works wonders, is very easy to use, and is wonderful when you change your plans. I had tried another program, and it was a huge pain “moving up” assignements etc when we changed our plans.
It just isn’t friendly for planning what subject or resources to use each day… generally I do that on paper first (as others have mentioned) – but I’d just like that to be friendlier. And yes, getting an idea of what we are doing (even which resources) on a day other than today or tomorrow would be nice.)
The figuring out what subjects to do each day is going to be more important when my husbands work schedule changes monthly, and so I’ll need to change our schedule monthly… But that said, I will work out something that will work for us… and I don’t see it being any easier with any other programs I’ve looked at!
However, I’m also a visual person and I know what you mean about liking to see if there is too much on a day. I do have a solution to propose.
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