I was compensated for the review of HomeSchool Minder with the understanding that I would give my full and honest opinion of this software. If you would like to know a break down of my policy for reviews please see my Policy page.

When we began homeschooling three and a half years ago we lived in New York at the time. I of course started researching all sorts of topics for homeschooling but my biggest ones were homeschool laws, record keeping and curriculum. I quickly became a little obsessed with the laws because New York is… well… a little over the top on all that you need to record and track while teaching your kids. So you could say I’ve been on a mission to find the best and easiest software to keep track of it all for me. In walks (or the internet equivalent too) HomeSchool Minder…

What HomeSchool Minder has to offer…

After adding each of your kiddos in as students and setting your specific terms for the school year, you can quickly move right in to lesson planning! Oh and by the way, they have a super easy tutorial that will guide you through the set up process. Seriously – they’ve thought of everything!

Add Your Courses

What courses are you covering with each student? Adding each course was simple.

Choose a school year.
Create a name for this course.
Choose a student you will be assigning it to.
Select how you will be assessing your student (this can be different for every course).

Lesson Planning

What I loved about this section is that you can add as much or as little information as you want. Some of us like tons of detail and others just the basics – HomeSchool Minder is totally flexible!

Calendar

This might be the greatest feature of all!

Monthly View

Weekly View

That’s right! HomeSchool Minder has 2 views for your calendar: monthly and weekly. Plus you can keep track of your chores, events you’re going to, doctors appointments, vacations, etc. This can truly become your family calendar for you. The more I play with this calendar the more I am filling it with our family plans.

Record Keeping

I’m not going to share with you every report HomeSchool Minder has to offer – no spoilers here. But this is a glimpse of the reports you can generate on your kiddos. Let’s just say they have nailed it here! Unless the schools come up with some new wacky report they need I think you’re covered now.

Take HomeSchool Minder Anywhere

Because this awesome software is web-based you can literally take it anywhere you go. I’ve been using mine on my iPad instead of printing our lesson plans. I just take it with me for our school day and tap away to each lesson and enter grades or completions while we are in school still. This has been a serious time saver for me!

So what did I think about HomeSchool Minder?

Well obviously I am 100% sold on HomeSchool Minder! I don’t think I can hide that fact even a little. But here is what truly sold me:

Super clean and easy to view website. I don’t like a lot of stuff floating around and distracting me from why I’m there.
The Calendar! I can’t say that enough – THE CALENDAR! I love that I can consolidate every thing going on with our family into just one calendar. That’s huge right?!? No more tracking down all the calendars and making sure we are all on the same page.
The records and reports you can generate. You never know when God may move you to a state that requires all the crazy reports like New York does (or maybe you already live in one like that). Keeping good clean records from the start is just a great practice to have (in my opinion).

Is there anything HomeSchool Minder doesn’t do yet? Well, since I fell in love very quickly with this software I thought needed to make myself very picky and really think of something that it could be missing. And I could only find just one thing:

A Library. The one and only thing I can think of is it would be nice to be able to also use HomeSchool Minder as a library for all of our homeschool books (and others as well). I’ve always thought it would be nice to keep track of my ever growing library of books on a program like this. BUT keep in mind – HomeSchool Minder is still in BETA form so you never know – it could be something in the works.

So are you ready to check out HomeSchool Minder for yourself? I thought so! HomeSchool Minder has been kind enough to offer the first 50 Homeschoolin’ Mama Readers 20% OFF their first years subscription! But you need to hurry because only the first 50 who subscribe are eligible for this discount!

Don’t forget to check out HomeSchool Minder at their website and follow them on Facebook and Twitter! You’ll be glad you did!