The Homeroom Guide

Quick start

From nothing to a working homeschool in about five minutes.

1. 1

   Create your family

   Open Homeroom, choose Create family, and pick a family name, email, and password. That password is the parent key: it protects settings, editing, and overrides, so don't share it with the kids.

2. 2

   Add your students

   Settings → Students → Add student. Give each one a name, an avatar, and (optionally) a 4-digit PIN. Skip the PIN for young kids so they can tap straight in; add PINs if siblings share a device and like to meddle.

3. 3

   Create subjects

   Settings → Subjects. Tap a preset chip (Mathematics, Language Arts, Science, History…) or type your own. Pick a color and the days of the week the subject happens, and turn on grading if you want it (letters, percent, or pass/fail). Keep core subject colors the same for every student; the calendar becomes readable at a glance.

4. 4

   Fill in lessons

   The fastest path for a full curriculum: Add → Generator. Tell it "Lesson {n}", how many, and a start date, and it lays out the whole numbered sequence across that subject's school days. Have a spreadsheet from your curriculum provider? Add → Import and paste it straight in. One-offs go in Quick add.

5. 5

   Hand the device over

   Tap Hand off to student and pass the tablet. Your student sees only their day: they tap a lesson, read the instructions, open any links, and hit the big green Mark Complete. You see it turn green instantly on your side.

6. 6

   End the week with a report

   Reports shows every student side by side: lessons done out of planned, percentages, grades. Export CSV for your records or print it. A frozen snapshot also saves itself every Monday morning.

The daily flow

Two views, one truth: parents plan, students check off.

Parent mode

Today is your home base: one card per student with a progress ring and the day's lessons. Tap any lesson to read it, change its status, add notes, edit, or delete. Parents can override anything, including un-completing a lesson a student checked by mistake.

Student mode

• Hand off to student switches the device into kid mode. A student with a PIN enters it on a big friendly keypad; one without taps straight in.
• Opening a lesson marks it In progress automatically, so you can see who has started.
• Mark Complete turns the lesson green, adds a ✓ to its title, and quietly records the completion time. If the subject is graded, a small prompt asks how it went (skippable).
• Mis-taps happen: students get a 15-minute window to undo their own check-off. After that, only a parent can change it.
• Students cannot edit lessons, change dates, recolor anything, or reach settings. Getting back to parent mode requires the family password.

Adding lessons

Four ways in, from one-at-a-time to a whole year at once.

Every lesson can carry instructions, unlimited resource links (textbook pages, websites, videos), a lesson number, an estimated duration, and either a start time or all-day placement. Lessons always land on their subject's configured weekdays, skipping breaks and holidays.

Forwarding lessons

Sick week? Field trip overload? Move everything in one click without breaking the sequence.

• Forward All lives on every subject page, and a recovery banner appears on Today whenever missed lessons pile up.
• Two modes: push everything by N school days, or pick a resume date (the default when recovering missed work is to resume today).
• Forwarding moves every incomplete lesson in the subject, including upcoming ones, so the sequence keeps its exact order with no gaps and no doubled-up days. Completed lessons never move.
• Weekends, breaks, holidays, and each subject's own weekly rhythm are respected automatically.
• You always see a preview first: how many lessons, per subject, and each subject's new finish date. Nothing changes until you confirm.
• If a subject can't fit before your school year ends, Homeroom says so and leaves it put rather than scheduling past the end. Extend the year end in Settings and forward again.
• Forwarded lessons show blue until they're completed, so you can spot rescheduled work.

Calendar and subjects

Color is the language: one glance tells you the day.

Calendar shows the family week: every student, every day, each lesson as a colored pill. Filter to one student, hop between weeks, tap any pill to open it. Subjects lists each student's subjects with progress bars, missed counts, and finish dates; tap one for its full lane: every lesson in order with a rapid-add box at the bottom.

The suggested core palette. Ten colors are available; green is reserved for completed work, always.

Reports, attendance, transcript

Your records, computed continuously and frozen weekly.

• Weekly report: all students side by side, one row per subject, ✓/total and percent complete, then a full per-student breakdown with dates, grades, estimated vs. actual minutes, and notes. Browse any week, past or current.
• Snapshots: every Monday morning Homeroom freezes the prior week's report permanently, so your records can't drift if lessons are edited later. Save snapshot does the same on demand.
• Export CSV downloads the whole report in a file that opens directly in Google Sheets or Excel.
• Attendance: a day counts as attended when at least one lesson was completed that day. Planned vs. attended is tracked per student over any date range, ready for state paperwork.
• Transcript: year-to-date per student: lessons completed, grade averages, hours, and a weighted GPA, with a print layout suitable for official records.

Printing

Six clean, black-and-white friendly layouts. No app chrome.

Every print view has a Print button; choose “Save as PDF” in the print dialog to get a file instead of paper.

School year settings

Set the calendar once; everything else respects it.

• Year start and end: lesson scheduling and forwarding never plan past the year end.
• School days: which weekdays your family does school. Subjects can narrow this further (Science on Mon/Wed/Fri, History on Tue/Thu).
• Breaks and holidays: add a name and a date range. Nothing schedules on those days and forwarding hops over them.
• Terms: semesters or quarters, used to group the transcript.
• Missed cutoff: the hour when today's unfinished lessons turn red (5 PM by default).
• Timezone: set once; “today” and the cutoff follow it everywhere.

Google Calendar sync

Optional. If your family already lives in Google Calendar, Homeroom meets you there.

• Connect the parent Google account in Settings, then map each student to an existing calendar or create “[Name]'s Homeschool” with one click.
• Every lesson mirrors as an event: subject color, instructions and links in the description, green ✓ when completed, red ⚠ when missed, blue when forwarded.
• Sync is one-way, Homeroom → Google, on purpose: Homeroom stays the source of truth and nobody can fake a completion by editing an event. Updates push moments after each change, with a nightly pass for lessons that became overdue by the clock.
• To give a student their own view, share their calendar with their Google account using Google Calendar's normal sharing settings.
• Disconnecting leaves your events in place; Homeroom simply stops updating them.

Install it like an app

Homeroom is a progressive web app: no app store needed.

Installed or not, it's the same app and the same data: sign in from any device, anywhere.

Questions and tips