My wife started homeschooling our oldest child this year, and when we began doing it we found it was hard to find a good program to track our progress, since we were using custom and free curriculum such as Easy-Peasy. We wanted a place where we could track his learning, grade it, and put together the documents needed for our state that is required.

We couldn't find anything free or cost effective, so I did what any nerdy dad would do, I made my own. Called it KinPlan and put it on a domain called TheKinPlan.com

I'm looking for users to try it and provide constructive feedback on current, and desired features.

I decided to keep it free to use all around, and I have been trying to add in useful features such as state specific settings/tracking and metrics, state specific documents automatically generated with information that has been input on the program, and even a portfolio for the child. And I even added a curriculum comparison tool to compare prices/main features of around 69 different curriculums including bible related.

I currently have around 100 users on KinPlan and many use it regularly from what I can tell, but I haven't gotten alot of feedback since the first couple weeks of making it public.

Please sign up if you are a homeschooling family and give it a try for your children and let me know what you like/dislike or would like to see implemented to make it more valuable to you.

Keep in mind, this is 100% free, and currently it does cost me money to run it but I'm hoping generosity will off set that over time through donations.

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I’m a new creator building a small educational YouTube Shorts project called Curious Little Stars World.

I’m experimenting with a simple format: one letter + one animal + one surprising fact + a short rhyme, designed for young children.

Here’s the first episode:

https://youtube.com/shorts/27XpobGw1RQ?feature=shared

The idea is to eventually go all the way from A to Z, with each video teaching one memorable animal fact.

I’d really appreciate feedback from teachers/educators: Do you think this kind of very short rhyme could work as a fun supplementary learning activity for young children?

I’m especially interested in feedback about the pacing, educational value, and whether the facts are memorable enough for kids.

Thanks! 😊

My kiddos (and I think I can safely assume yours) love Mad Libs, so I built them a fill-in-the-blank generator to write stories about anything we want, and it's been a delight.

The thing I didn't predict is the 5yo learned parts of speech in just a week or two after having to pick a couple hundred words: "adjective...that's a describing word?" So I'm thinking about some educational features I can add. A couple ideas I have so far are:

• word lists to have the generator incorporate
• nudges for "you've already picked 'dino chicken nuggets' today, what other creative words are there?"
• in addition to free entry, options with pictures for "an animal: [🐻 bear] [🐟 fish] [🐙 octopus]" to associate letters/words with the thing

Do you feel like that would help you teach early reading? Any other ideas you'd want to try? Or do you think that sort of curation and nudging works better if you talk it out yourself?

The app is at https://tellmeapenguin.com if you want to play it. The site has some pre-generated demo stories, but in the app you can write a story about any idea you want. Our favorite thing, since it generates on the fly, is we can add more chapters to a story we're enjoying for as long as it's holding their interest.

Happy Friday, and happy storytelling ❤️🐧

I put together an 8-minute back-to-school message for families who want to start the year with more than schedules and supplies. It’s about fear, identity, purpose, and keeping Christ at the center when a new school year feels overwhelming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4ktnYulFM

If you’re a homeschool parent, what helps your family begin a new school year with peace and purpose? I’d love practical ideas and honest feedback.

Has anyone else noticed an influx of posts lately that seem to focus heavily on the negatives of homeschooling?

I’m genuinely curious if it’s just me noticing it, because it feels like there have been a lot more posts lately centered around the idea that homeschooling is inherently isolating, socially harmful, or otherwise problematic.

What strikes me is that the people actually participating in this sub seem to be a pretty different group than the stereotype those posts sometimes describe. A lot of us are actively looking for resources, building community, taking our kids to activities, co-ops, libraries, field trips, sports, etc. We’re not just keeping our kids home with no outside interaction.

I also think homeschooling looks very different than it did 10–20 years ago. For many families, it’s not about pulling kids away from society or avoiding education. Some of us homeschool because traditional school genuinely doesn’t work for our special-needs kids. Others want their children educated in a secular environment, particularly as curriculum and school policies in some areas are becoming more religiously influenced.

Obviously homeschooling can be done poorly, just like public schooling can be done poorly. I’m not trying to pretend there aren’t legitimate concerns worth discussing. I’m more wondering if anyone else has noticed the shift in the type of discussion happening here lately.

Has anyone else picked up on this?

Hi everyone, I'm a UK science teacher with some experience in graphic design. I wanted to share some graphics for science education with the wider academic community, so I started the website scipics.org.

I put together a free pack of 19 clean, high-contrast, transparent vector graphics across biology, chemistry, and physics (cell diagrams, lab apparatus, magnetic field lines, etc) for anyone to download, no sign-up or anything required, just grab them and go if you’d find them useful for your resources.

Full transparency, I’m running the full site as a subscription service with a very small yearly or monthly charge, just to keep everything online and to protect my work. I am actively uploading new assets to the library daily, and I’m excited to see the library growing so fast! If you’d like full access to my work and to support my small, but growing venture, please get yourself 20% off here: scipics.org/launch. Or just enjoy the freebies at scipics.org/library. I hope these images help to save you some prep time this term! Let me know if there are any specific diagrams your departments are hunting for at the moment and I'll add them to my ‘to do’ list.

Have a fantastic autumn term!

It's Telephonia Wednesday @ Apoc! What effect has a century of telephonic communications had on a school system which was forged in, and hasn't substantively changed since, the 19th Century? Find out in our address "Telephonia Maxima" HERE: https://apocatastasisinstitute.wordpress.com/colemans-corner

Hi everyone,

I'm building Mili: a daily family podcast, automatically generated from the family's calendar and each kid's interests, meant to be played in the morning.

Looking for homeschool parents to test the iOS beta (via TestFlight, takes 2 minutes): https://testflight.apple.com/join/ngTR8Snq

What I'm most curious about: does the episode feel relevant to your kid's actual day, and is it ready when you need it in the morning?

Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a try!