My School Year is a one-stop-shop for all of your homeschooling and record-keeping needs. The features offered through My School Year include attendance and hour tracking, automated grading systems, daily or weekly lesson plan emails, lesson plan tools and generators, lesson sharing between members, a calendar and scheduling system, student logins, professional reports and an unlimited amount of student slots. This program has so many different options within each feature that I cannot list them all here. For example, the lesson planning tool is called Create-A-Plan and within that there are four options: Quick Split Basic, Quick Split Advanced, Rapid Repeat Basic and Rapid Repeat Advanced. Another example is the professional reports tool. Within that tool alone there are 13 options. A few of them are report card, attendance, lesson plans, reading logs and much more. Also available with a subscription, is email support, toll-free phone support, video tutorials, on-page help, information tips and downloadable guides. An annual subscription costs $50 and includes a price lock guarantee which means the price will never go up. Another subscription is also available at $5 a month. A No-Risk Free Trial is also available for one month.

I used My School Year to organize a schedule for my oldest daughter’s summer school schedule with plans to make the same schedules for my younger children. This program is intended for all grades and ages. Since it is fully customizable I think it can be used for any style of homeschooling and any type of learner. This program is accessed online through your home office, laptop, tablet or phone. Please note though that it does not have an app to download for the tablet or phone but would just be accessed through your browser on those devices.

When I first started using My School Year I was a little disappointed. It didn’t seem easy to figure out the ins and outs of the program. But after watching the many different video tutorials available through their website I was able to quickly figure out how to use it and how to make it work for our style of homeschooling. At one point, I had trouble logging in to the site but after contacting the company I was given sufficient help and the problem was remedied quickly. I like that I can make individual schedules for each of my students as well as chore charts. The fact that these can also be printed is great for those students who can work independently but also for those who don’t have access to email or devices. I hope that in the future more video tutorials are available. In one section of the program where you are able to make schedules there is a feature that I think could use some work. It is just a matter of an edit option being available during the Create-A-Plan feature. So many times, when I was learning how to make the plans, I had to delete and start over because I made one mistake in the “lesson name pattern” section. An edit option would save a lot of time here and I’m sure in other areas with a similar set up. I feel like after watching the videos it became more of a user-friendly program. However, I do think the program could use a bit of updating or rearranging to make it a little more user friendly. Perhaps a step by step tutorial option would be useful in addition to the videos.

With a subscription to My School Year you have access to a multitude of resources that help keep you and your students organized. I am looking forward to using this throughout the next school year. I feel as though the more I use it the more I will get out of it. Many times, these types of programs are not customizable enough and therefore only end up working for a select few with the same style as the creator of the program. With My School Year you are able to make it work for you it just takes a little bit of work and focus to get it down.

-Product review by Leslie Talley, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, April, 2017