Keep It Simple vs. CM Organizer

They are not the same. The lesson plans provide you with a schedule, resources to obtain and use, and teaching helps. The organizer is a tool to schedule and track progress. The organizer complements the Lesson Plans but cannot replace them. You can use either one independently.

As an example lets say you have a 2nd and 4th grader. You decide to purchase the following lesson plans:

Genesis/Egypt for history

Enrichment volume 1

Individual Studies 2

Individual Studies 4

So you have your lesson plans and now you look through and collect, purchase, borrow the resources suggested in the plans. You are now totally ready for a complete school year and can stop. But if you like to track progress and have help scheduling out additional resources, keeping track of attendance, printing reports you purchase the organizer. So lets say you are like me and love to have an electronic record. You set up your students in the organizer and use your lesson plans to enter each resource in the organizer. Since you are using the SCM resources its super simple, the resources are all in the bookfinder and you just assign them to your student. Now each day you can open your organizer and mark off whether they worked on or completed an assigment. It it were me I would hand the individual study plans to each student as their daily schedule, have them note in the book their progress, then I could enter it into my organizer. Same with the History and Enrichment, just make notes as I go then enter it in electronically. If you are using all the Keep it Simple plans the organizer may seem redundant in early years and you probably dont need it, but it is handy come Jr High and High School, and very handy for seeing progress. I tend to feel behind and often feel we are not accomplishing much, but the organizer helps me see the progress, I can run a report and see all my students have  completed amd how far they have come. Sorry to be so long winded, I just know how hard it is to envision how something may work. Hope that helps a little.

Crystal

I also use the CM Organizer, and it is very helpful to have those records to print or simply look back on.  This is especially true at the end of the year for us as we have a portfolio of book lists and work samples evaluated by a teacher certified in our state.  I can just print off a lot of what I need for that.

There is a free (basic) version of the Organizer as well as a paid version. I am not sure what the differences are, but I must say that having all of the features of the Organizer available make it well worth the few dollars per month that I pay to subscribe to it.

Thank you for asking the question regarding this! I had been wondering the same thing.  This clarifies quite a bit.  Thanks again!

If you are using the SCM lesson plans then you would add the Early Modern or Modern guide into the scheduler. You just search the bookfinder for it and click add resource. The kind folks at SCM have done all the hard work already so the assignments are set up. For example you assign it to your student, or in my case I assign it to Family, under the subject History. Use the drop down menus to customize how you will use the resource, read and narrate, read together, complete, etc. Select which days you want to use the resource. For the guide you would use it Mon – Fri. So each day the lesson will appear. Lesson 1, Read Stories of the Nations, Pages 1-5 or whatever the lesson is in the guide. The SCM resources in the bookfinder match the physical guide so it is easy peasy. I also assign each individual resource for each of my 3 students, since they are SCM recommended the chapter breaks and assignment divisions typically line up and it is very little work for us. So I guess the short answer is no, you dont have to type all that in if you are using a SCM guide. I hope that helps and didnt make things more confusing.