Calendar
The heart and soul of HomeSchool Minder is the calendar. Here you will find an overview of every assignment, lesson, field trip, appointment, chore--even your own custom events. Additionally, you can use the calendar to keep track of attendance.
Browsing the Calendar
The calendar by default shows a month''s worth of activities: assignments, lesson plan activities, field trips, and custom events such as chores and appointments. Each day shows the events and activities that you have scheduled, allowing you to plan your teaching effectively and recognize potential scheduling conflicts. If you keep track of attendance, the calendar will also allow you to see your student''s attendance at a glance, as each day is marked with a check mark to indicate that the student was present for that day''s studies.
By clicking on the "week" button at the top right corner of the calendar, you can display activities one week at a time. This lets you see the schedule of activities for each day in more detail.
To navigate to the previous week or month, click on the arrow buttons at the top left corner of the screen. You can always return to today''s week or month by clicking on the Today button beside the arrows.
Schedule Summary
In both the week and month view, you can drill down to the details of a particular day. Simply click anywhere inside the day you are interested in, and a schedule summary will appear to the right of the calendar.
The first thing you''ll notice is the attendance header. If you have chosen to keep track of attendance by the number of days, then you will see a checkbox that you can use to indicate that the student was present that day. Otherwise,you will see a text field where you can enter the number of hours present. (See the Attendance settings page for more details about these settings.)
Below the attendance header, the Schedule view will list all the events for the day. The name of each event is a link that you can click on to open the event and edit its information.
In the case of lesson plan instructions (activities), below the activity name you will also see a link to the lesson plan to which the activity belongs; clicking on this link will navigate to that lesson plan in the Lesson Plans module. In the example above, the "Mile Run" event is an activity in the "Fitness Test" lesson plan; clicking on the "Fitness Test" link will take you to that lesson plan, where you can review or modify the lesson plan details or its other activities and assignments.
Finally, the schedule summary view allows you to delete an event by clicking on the delete icon to the right of its name.
You can click on other days in the calendar to view the schedule summary foreach day. To hide the schedule summary, click on the calendar anywhere inside thecurrently selected day.
Filtering Events
If you are only interested in certain types of activities, you can click on the filter buttons in the calendar header. For instance, you can choose to see only assignments, chores and appointments, as in the example below, by clicking onthe Assignments and Custom filter buttons.
To turn off filtering, click on the "All" filter button and the calendar will display all scheduled events and activities as before.
Adding Assignments
To schedule a new assignment, click on the Add drop-down button at the top right corner of the screen, and select the Assignment option. A modal entry form will appear. In addition to the assignment name and description, here you can select the course to which the assignment belongs and the date.
You will also be able to enter the grading details. First, select the type of assignment from the "Assignment category" dropdown. Then enter the number of points possible. Finally, select the grade scale that will be used to convert the points earned to a letter grade.
When you click Save, the assignment will be created and will appear on the date you selected in the calendar as an all-day event.
(For more information about defining your own assignment categories, see the Assignment Categories settings page. For more information about managing the available grade scales, see the Scales and Symbols settings page.)
Note that assignments that you create in the calendar will not be associated with any lesson plan. To create an assignment that forms part of a lesson plan, you must go to the Lesson Plans module, selected the desired lesson plan, and then create the assignment.
Adding Lesson Plan Instructions
To schedule a new lesson plan instruction (activity), click on the Add drop-down button and select the Lesson option. A wizard will appear.
After selecting the course and lesson plan to which the activity will belong, click Next. In the last page of the wizard, you will be able to enter the activity name and description. In addition, you can schedule the activity by specifying the beginning and ending dates. Finally, you can select a lesson plan resource from the resources available for the course and enter a note in the "Resource details" text area indicating how the resource will be used in this activity (for more information about lesson plan resources and how to add new ones, see the Lesson Plans module).
Once you''ve added the new activity by clicking Save, it will appear in the calendar on the day and at the times you specified.
Adding Field Trips
Adding field trips can be done by clicking on the Add drop-down button at the top right of the screen and selecting the "Field Trip" option. Once the entry form appears, enter the field trip name and description, as well as the beginning and ending dates and times. Click Save to create the field trip and return to the calendar, where you should see the entry for the field trip on the day you selected.
Adding Appointments and Chores
As we will see below, HomeSchool Minder allows you to create custom events for your own particular needs. We have already added two very frequently used events for you: Appointments and Chores.
Adding Chores and Appointments works in exactly the same way as Field Trips, except that these events, like all custom events, also allow you to define a repeating schedule.
To define a repeating event, in the event entry form you can click on the Repeat drop-down to select a simple repeating schedule such as "Every Day", "Every Week", or "Every Month". The event will recur every day, week, or month until the end of the school year.
If you need a more complicated schedule, choose "Custom". Say we would like to schedule the above dental appointment every two weeks, starting today, Thursday January 10, 2013, and recurring every second Thursday until the end of May. Enter "1/10/2013" for both the beginning and ending dates, and set the appointment to begin at 10 a.m. and end at 11 a.m. Enter "2" in the "Repeat every" text field, and confirm that the radio button for Thursday is selected. Finally, enter the "Repeat until" date, which specifies when the appointments will stop (note that this date does not have to fall on a Thursday).
After clicking Save, we can see that the event has been added to the calendar asexpected.
Browsing to the beginning of June, we can verify that the event''s last occurrence is on Thursday, May 30.
Note that if you delete a repeating event, you will delete that occurrence and any occurrences after it. For example, if we delete the dental appointment that occurs on Thursday, May 16, then the appointment on May 30 will also be deleted. If instead we delete the first event on Thursday, January 10, then all appointments will be deleted.
Adding Custom Events
If assignments, lesson plan instructions, field trips, appointments and chores are not enough for your planning needs, HomeSchool Minder allows you to create your own custom events. These custom events can be scheduled just like appointments and chores, including the ability to schedule them as repeating events.
To add a new custom event type you can navigate to the Events settings page. However, you can also define them without leaving the calendar. Simply click on the Add drop-down button at the top right of the screen, and select the "Add Event Type" option.
A modal screen will appear, showing the Events settings page. Let''s add a new custom event, "Birthday".
After that, when adding events to the calendar you will have to option to add a Birthday event along with all the other event types.
Modifying Events
You can open any event by clicking on it in the calendar. The event''s entry form will appear, where you can make changes. You can also open an event by clicking on its name in the Schedule summary (which you can display by clicking anywhere inside a day in the calendar).
You can always reschedule an event by opening it and changing the beginning and/or ending dates. However, you might find it much easier to do this simply by dragging the event to the desired date in the calendar.
In the month view, besides dragging an event to another day, you can convert it to a multi-day event by placing your cursor on the rightmost edge of the event and dragging the edge to extend it.
In the week view, you can similarly drag the event to another day. In addition, you can drag the event to a new time (all-day events can only be dragged to a different day). You can also change the event''s duration by placing your cursor and dragging the bottom edge of the event to extend or shorten it.
Deleting Events
To delete an event, click on the day of the event to open the schedule summary, then click on the delete icon beside the event name.
Event-related Reports
If you need to see a listing of events, the Reports module lets you select from a variety of reports that you can easily print out or share electronically.
Reports for specific event types include the Field Trip Summary, Appointment Summary, and Chore Summary reports. The Monthly Activities and Daily Activities reports include all events displayed in the calendar, including assignments, lesson plan instructions, field trips, and all custom events.
Finally, the Detailed Attendance and Attendance Summary reports list the attendance statistics for the current student for a given day or month during the current year.
Calendar Docs