Use Microsoft Software For Your Homeschool

Microsoft Excel could be put to good use in your homeschool, for everything from tracking grades to teaching math formulas. For teaching math formulas, Excel makes it easy to visualize variables and functions and the results that are produced. You can plug your variables into column “A” and then your formulas into column “B” and see the results in column “C”. When changing column “A”, you can immediately see the effect this has on the calculations of the formula. You can also double click on the bottom right corner of the cell to have Excel automatically apply a pattern on the cells below it. So, you can quickly fill a column with the numbers 1 through 10, or only odds, or various other patterns. This can be helpful for getting your child to see a pattern emerge in a formula. Or you can use the results and create a graph, which changes as you change the variables column. This can help children quickly see how a graph is related to functions. Microsoft Excel could be an important piece of software for your homeschool.

Online Homeschool Software

An online approach to homeschool software would be to use something like Google docs. Google has an online spreadsheet program where you can do almost everything Excel or iWork numbers can do. Plus it has the advantage of being completely online based. This can be beneficial, since you can basically access all your homeschool software from anywhere. You need to create a google account if you don’t already have one, but once you do that, you have access to Google’s entire online software suite. Using spreadsheet, you can enter grades, and keep track of work and assignments, and then pull up the spreadsheet on any computer, anywhere. You could assign reading or course work to be pulled up by your child while at a friend’s house, or if you have to go out of town, you can check their work, without having to email files around.

Using Office As Your Homeschool Software

Many people use the Microsoft Office suite of products as their homeschool software for tracking assignments and grades. In the Office suite is a program called Excel. Excel is a software program that is good at keeping lists, and organizing rows of information. I can create an excel spreadsheet with multiple columns, perhaps a column for date, assignment, subject, grade, etc. I can then save the excel spreadsheet for future reference, or print it to show to the child or to homeschool administrators (required in some states). Excel is a great piece of homeschool software because it is so easy to use and is almost ubiquitous. I can share the files it creates via email or export them to all kinds of other file formats.