Questions parents ask
What parents ask us
Some of these are practical. Some are the ones you turn over after the children are asleep. Most came to us from families already learning at home, and the answers are as plain as we can make them.
The worry underneath
Is what we are doing enough?
How do I know if what we are doing is enough?
Usually more than it feels like, because the learning is spread across ordinary days and nobody lays it out side by side. The tool does that. The subjects your region teaches sit on one screen, lit where your child has already shown something and quiet where nothing has been written down yet. If you like, an email each week or each month tells you in plain words what that stretch covered.
What counts as enough for your family stays your call. The difference is that you make it looking at the whole year, instead of from memory at the end of a hard week.
What if my child is falling behind and I cannot see it?
Then the answer is to look, and the tool lets you. It lays what your child has shown so far beside what your region's curriculum sets for their age, and over the months it points out what keeps coming back and what has gone quiet.
When something keeps being hard, name it in your own words. On a computer, the tool traces the earlier skills it rests on and shows which of those you have not yet seen, so you can start there. Nothing in it labels your child or decides anything for you.
What should we be writing down, and how much?
Less than you think. One sentence about something that happened, or the photo you were going to take anyway, is a whole entry. You do not have to work out which subject it belongs to; the tool finds the learning in it and matches it to your region's curriculum, and you confirm it.
You do not need to capture everything your child does. Capture what made you look twice, keep going for a few months, and the record fills in around it.
Our days are already full. How much time does this take?
A sentence, a photo, or a few seconds of your voice while the moment is still happening. The matching, the sorting into subjects and the writing up are the tool's work, not yours.
If the evening suits you better, save the day's moments and add them after bedtime. They count the same.
Some subjects have nothing in them yet. Have we fallen short?
A quiet subject means nothing has been written down there yet, and that is all it means. Children rarely move through subjects evenly, and a month spent deep in one thing often touches others you never thought to log.
Seeing the quiet ones is useful in its own way. It tells you where to look for learning you may have missed, or where to plan something when you are ready.
Does learning at home have to look like school to count?
A question in the car, a batch of bread, a lesson you planned at the kitchen table: all of it is learning, and all of it goes in the record.
The curriculum where you live describes what children learn by a certain age. The tool looks at what your child actually learned, not whether the day looked like school, and shows you where your family's way of doing it meets what your region describes.
Your child, your way
Will it work for us?
My child is neurodivergent. We go at their pace, follow their interests, and do not use a set curriculum. Will this work for us?
Yes. Yours is the family we built it for first. You do not need a curriculum, a schedule or anyone else's order of things. You write down what actually happened, in your own words, and the tool finds the learning in it. The curriculum where you live is used as a map to show where that learning lands, never as a pace your child has to keep.
Children who learn interest first rarely move evenly, and the record is built for that. A month deep in one passion shows up as exactly that, and the quiet subjects simply wait. Nothing in the tool labels your child, scores them or decides anything about them. Over the months it shows you what keeps coming back and how they learn, so you can tell a skill still being built from simply who they are. What you do with that stays your call.
Isn't this just another app? I worry it will pull my attention away from my child.
It is built to do the opposite, and to put more of your attention on your child. A moment takes a sentence, a photo or a few seconds of your voice, and then the phone goes back in your pocket.
What changes is what you notice. Every time you notice something worth keeping, you are noticing your child, and seeing them in a way they may never have felt seen. You take responsibility for their growth and their education one ordinary day at a time, and along the way you build the confidence that you are the expert on your child. The tool just makes sure none of it is lost.
What you end up holding
The record, and how it fills
What do we actually end up with?
A Learning Record for each child: what they did, what it shows they learned, and the evidence behind it, with the date on every entry. Your own sentence is quoted as you wrote it, with the curriculum wording beside it, so whoever reads it sees your family in the terms they already use.
Pick a child and a period, whether a term, a year or everything since you began, and it becomes a document you can print or hand over. Keep going for a few years and it turns into something bigger: the story of how your child learned, told in your voice.
We already take photos of everything. Can we start with those?
Yes, and for most families it is the easiest way in. Take the photo, or pick one you already have, add a line about what happened if you like, and the tool does the rest. A few seconds of your voice works the same way.
The picture you were going to take anyway becomes evidence in your child's record, instead of one more photo lost in the camera roll by June.
We plan lessons and use a curriculum too. Does that belong here?
It does, and it counts the same. The lesson you sat down to teach, the workbook page, the trip you planned for weeks: all of it goes in, beside the question nobody saw coming.
The tool helps with the planned side too. Keep a plan of what you want to introduce over the quarter or the year, and if you like, get one idea each morning for each child, built from what they are already into. Families who plan every week and families who follow the child end up with the same kind of record.
Can both of us add to the same record?
Yes. Invite your partner and you share every child and one record, both of you adding to it, under one subscription. The photo one of you took at the park and the story the other heard at bedtime end up in the same place, instead of in a text thread nobody can find later.
You can also invite someone to just one child. You decide who is invited, and you can take that access back at any time.
Does my child have to use it?
No. The tool is for you, the parent. Your child never needs a login, an account or a screen, and gets on with their day while you notice.
That was deliberate. The point is more of your attention on them, and none of theirs on a device.
Your region, your school, your years
Where you live, and where you go next
Does it follow the curriculum where we live?
The tool holds the curriculum for all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, all 50 US states and Washington DC, and England. English, math, science and social studies are matched to your own region's curriculum in every one of them, from kindergarten to the end of elementary school.
Physical education is matched in Canada and England, and is still being added for most US states. Wherever a subject is not in your region's own framework, the tool tells you so plainly instead of filling the gap with something else.
We learn at home through an online school or program, and a teacher checks in with us. How does this help?
Whoever reviews your child's learning, whether that is a teacher, a learning consultant or an evaluator, needs to see what your child has been doing, and you are the one who saw it. The tool turns the moments you capture into a dated record matched to your region's curriculum, with your own words as the evidence, ready when the check-in comes around.
What your school or program asks for, and in what form, is their decision. The first time, put the record beside what they have asked for, and send what fits.
What happens to our record if we change schools or move?
It stays with you. The record belongs to your family, not to any school or program, so it carries on across schools and across years.
If you move to another province, state or country the tool covers, your child's history comes with you, matched to the new region's curriculum, and nothing starts over.
Will this make sure we meet the rules where we live?
No tool can promise that, and we will not pretend to. Each province, state and country sets its own rules, and whether a record meets them is decided by whoever reviews it.
What we do is publish a plain summary of what each region asks of families learning at home, on our requirements by region page, and give you a record built to be handed over. You read the rules, you decide what to send, and you stay the one in charge. None of it is legal advice.
Your child's information
Who sees your child's record
Who can see our child's record?
You, and the people you invite. Nobody else is given access. We never sell a child's record, never share it with schools or government, and never use it as demo content.
The one exception would be a valid legal order such as a court order, and our Privacy Policy sets out exactly how we would handle that, including telling you when the law allows.
Is my child's information used to train AI?
No. The part of the tool that reads a moment and finds the learning in it runs on our own Cloudflare infrastructure. It sees only that one note, your child's age and a list of possible topics, holds on to nothing once the match is made, and none of it is used to train any model. Your child's records and photos are never sent to an outside AI.
One thing worth knowing: when you speak a moment instead of typing it, your phone's own dictation turns speech into text, and depending on your device settings that may go through Apple or Google. You can always type instead.
Can we take our record with us, or delete it?
Both, whenever you choose. You can export your family's data from the tool at any time, voice recordings included, and keep your own copy.
Deleting a child or your whole account removes it from our live database straight away and from backups within 30 days. It is a true delete, and nothing is archived.
Starting
Getting started
What ages is it for?
From age three to the end of elementary school. Start whenever your child is; the record simply begins where you do, and it keeps every year you add.
What does it cost, and where do we get it?
One subscription covers your whole household, however many children you add, and every plan starts with two weeks free. Prices differ from country to country, so check the App Store on iPhone or Google Play on Android for the exact price where you live.
That is also where you subscribe and where you can cancel. There is no checkout on this website. Once you are in, you can also sign in on a computer and sit down with the whole record there.
Every child carries a family forward.
If your question is not here, ask us. Email admin@unschoolingacademy.org, or call or text 1-888-270-7882.
Then start with the first thing your child does today.