I was recently given the opportunity to review the new Throughline Homeschool Planner app and I’m so excited to tell you about it!
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know how much this Type A, home-educating-mom-of-three loves a good chat about homeschool organizing and planning. So you can imagine my giddiness when I received a complimentary year of their premium plan to check it out!
Disclosure: Other than the free year of access, I haven’t received any incentives for writing this. I’m not an affiliate of Throughline, and the opinions in this review reflect my own honest thoughts and experiences with this app.
I’m calling this a “Mini-Review” because it won’t be a super-comprehensive overview of every single feature in detail. What it will be is me sharing my favorite features and tips to help you decide if it’s a good fit for your family.
Throughline Homeschool Planner App Mini-Review
Any attempt to wrangle in the many facets of homeschool planning and combine them into one app will definitely get my attention!
Frankly, I was a little bit skeptical at first.
There are just too many moving pieces – state laws, curricula, school calendar, grades, transcripts, daily assignments for all my kids, tracking what actually got done… no one app could organize all that, right?
Well, leave it to an enterprising homeschooling family to find a way!
The creators of the Throughline Homeschool Planner are homeschooling parents themselves and have been building this tool for their own use in their own home. I’m so glad they decided to share it with the rest of us!
How Throughline Helps Homeschooling Parents
As I’ve said many times, kids are always learning. A lot of the play and exploration they do naturally “counts” as school, but it’s not always easy to track that type of learning and get credit for it when it comes time to submit reports or even just turn in attendance records.
Throughout my homeschooling years, I’ve been blessed to live in states with lenient homeschooling laws. But even with minimal required reporting, it’s still important to keep records of what we’ve accomplished, track the number of school days, and maintain high school transcripts with grades.
Throughline is an app that helps home educators do all of these things, regardless of how many students you have or which state you live in. It helps parents plan, log, and review their students’ school progress. In it, you can track attendance, create assignments, log grades, generate progress reports, and more.
Favorite Throughline App Features
- Clean design. My husband dabbles in app design, so I’ve witnessed how hard it is to streamline and layout an app in a user-friendly way that makes sense to different people. Throughline manages to incorporate a variety of features while keeping the interface clean and intuitive.
- Customizable tracking for each student. There is a huge difference between the record keeping I did for my kindergartener and what I’m doing for him now that he’s a senior in high school! The Throughline app accounts for this by offering three different tracking levels: “Simple” (if you just need to track basics like attendance), “Balanced” (for a little more detail in tracking progress and meeting goals), and “Detailed” (if you want advanced record-keeping and the ability to manage assignments, due dates, and grades). And the best part is you can select a different level for each student individually!
- Customizable access for kids. In other words, older students can update their own daily progress if you give them permission! Three cheers for delegating! I really appreciate that the permissions are fully customizable – you can use the presets (full, standard, restricted, or child lock) or use the custom permissions feature to set it up however you need to for each child.
- Streamlines the red tape. While I do love planning and organizing, I definitely don’t like busy work. Using Throughline, it’s easy to streamline the tedious, bureaucratic parts of your homeschool parent job description. You can generate whatever attendance records, progress reports, or paperwork might be needed for compliance with your state regulations. It’s easy to export to PDF or CSV and very professional-looking reports are generated instantly!
- Customizable planning defaults & templates. For each new activity added, defaults are automatically populated (like “Duration: 20 minutes”, for example), but you can change these default settings to fit your situation and eliminate the need to repeatedly change the same field. Similarly, the template feature allows you to setup reoccurring activities or assignments quickly and easily to minimize wasted time. (And we all know how precious homeschool mom time is!)
- Quick log activity feature. Inevitably, my kids end up doing more or less than I originally had planned for each day. But with this app, it’s easy to log an extra assignment or track time spent on a last-minute activity by using the “Quick Log” feature.
- Timer feature. I love that the user can track multiple students’ work or activities simultaneously and in real time. This helps determine how much time was actually spent on an assignment which is helpful for reporting but also for my own information (so I can see how much time it really takes for them to do things and plan more accurately in the future).
- Adjustability. As we all know, things don’t always go to plan. In fact, I can’t think of a single year where I haven’t made some significant mid-year changes to curriculum or activities. Throughline allows for additions and changes and doesn’t lock you into your original plans. If your son forgot to add in the extra time he spent finishing up an assignment, you can easily adjust the total time manually after the fact. If you need to add another subject or change out a curriculum, you can easily do that, too.
- Responsive customer service. The creators of Throughline have been quick to reply and very friendly any time I’ve contacted them. I love knowing that this was created by homeschoolers, for homeschoolers, and that they are using Throughline themselves with their own family.
There is a lot to like about Throughline, and there are more features than I have been able to use so far. It’s a very comprehensive app with a smorgasbord of planning, logging, and reporting features that are all customizable, so you can use the parts you need and the rest don’t get in the way.
Throughline App Bonus Tips
If you’re considering trying this app, here are a few final thoughts and considerations to help you get started:
- When I first tried Throughline, I got a little overzealous. Ignoring the clear getting started instructions in their Welcome email, I tried to jump right in and add activities and assignments first. But, just like IKEA furniture, the instructions are there for a reason. Adding an activity requires the subjects and curricula to already be setup, so my activities had blank drop down menus. Overcoming my ongoing desire to put the cart before the horse, I deferred to the app designer’s straightforward recommended setup steps. Not surprisingly, I got the basic setup done easily after that.
- Don’t wait until the last minute to run the official reports that you need to turn in to your district or administrator. Like any system, there’s a learning curve when it comes to customizing and using this app. Once you setup the features you want to use, run a test report to see if everything is showing up in the ways you expect them to.
- Just like any tool, this app should work for you and not the other way around. For example, if it overwhelms you to see too many stats (as in: “I’m only 4% done with this school year… I’m never going to make it!”), then only check in on the Yearly Reports when it becomes motivating (as in: “91% done with the school year… there’s a light at the end of the tunnel!”). Use the many customization options to make the app whatever you need it to be.
- If you live in a state with an umbrella school homeschooling system like mine, you’ll want to give some thought to how you can utilize Throughline to compliment and not duplicate your data entry. For example, if your umbrella school has their own unique online interface where you’re required to directly input your specific curricula, consider using the “Simple” or “Balanced” level tracking in Throughline to track subjects, progress, and attendance, but leave the curriculum blank so you’re not updating information in two places.
- Remember: Homeschooling regulations do sometimes change, and they vary greatly from state to state. If you’re using the app’s Compliance Checklists, always still double check your current homeschooling laws yourself! Even the most conscientious app-making team or the most well-meaning friend might share outdated or incorrect information once in a while. The Home School Legal Defense Association website outlines the current requirements by state, and it’s a good idea to check with your state’s official government website directly, too.
Creating an app that supports the incredibly wide range of needs and personalities of homeschooling families is no easy task. I’m very impressed with the design and content in the Throughline Homeschool Planner!
They offer a free trial which makes it easy and free to try for yourself. Go to jointhroughline.com to get more information and see how it can help simplify your homeschool record keeping!
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