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This is the help library for Homeschool Trellis, a planner for one family's homeschool where every child gets their own login. Start your free 30 days See what Trellis does
Help / Set Up Your Family
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Set Up Your Family

One evening of setup: your school year, your kids, their colors, and the settings everything else builds on.

Pictures match the device you pick. Red outlines mark the part of the screen being discussed.

1. Set your school year

Everything in Trellis, including planning, time off, grades, and yearly reports, lives inside a school year, so set it first.

  1. Open Settings from the menu under your name (top right on a computer; the ••• More button at the bottom on a phone).
  2. In the Academic Year card, set Start and End, then click Save Year.

The academic year is a repeating month/day boundary, not one specific pair of calendar years. Trellis generates each year's exact dates from that boundary.

Tip: When next year rolls around there is nothing to set up: Trellis works out your school years from these dates. When one year ends the next begins the very next day. Your old years stay saved exactly as they were, and every report has a year picker to look back.
Go straight there: Open Academic Year settings. Set the repeating start month/day and end month/day, then save once.

2. Add your children

  1. Open Children (also under the menu with your name).
  2. In Add Child, enter a Name. Username and password are optional. Leave them blank and Trellis picks simple ones for you; after saving, the picked password appears in the Child Logins section on this page.
  3. Choose a Current Grade so celebrations and defaults match their age.
  4. Pick a Color. Trellis suggests the next color no sibling is using, or tap the rainbow swatch to pick any custom color. This color follows the child everywhere: the calendar, the year view, and the gradebook.
  5. Click Add Child and repeat for each kid.

After adding, the Child Logins section on the same page is where you edit anything later. Click Edit beside a child to open their name, grade, color, password, Reading pace, device access, and Celebration style. The choices are Auto (by grade), Garden, Sparks, or Calm (no celebration) for kids who'd rather skip the confetti.

About kid passwords: child logins are simple by design, and you can always see them on the Children page (click the eye icon). Pick a fun, easy word, but don't reuse a password your child uses anywhere else.
The Children page creates a child account and keeps every saved child login available for later editing.
The Children page creates a child account and keeps every saved child login available for later editing on a phone.
The Children page creates a child account and keeps every saved child login available for later editing.

3. Name your subjects

Subjects power the color-coding, the gradebook, and the learning log's hours-by-subject totals.

  1. In Settings, find the Subject Settings card.
  2. Add each subject you teach, give it a color, and optionally add Default est. min, the estimated minutes a typical task takes. Kid focus timers start from that number.
Tip: Don't overthink the list. Subject dropdowns across the app are fed from this card, and you can add more subjects any time.

Finished with a subject? Choose Archive. Its assignments and records stay exactly as they were, while current planning lists get shorter; the Archived subjects section can restore it any time. Use Remove… only for a duplicate or typo you want to erase permanently. Trellis names every assignment, split credit, learning-log entry, completed record, and saved curriculum plan that depends on it. Then it asks where to move those records before removal. A truly unused subject can be removed without a replacement.

Subject Settings sets the planner order above a row per subject with its color, default estimated minutes, Rename, Archive and Remove.
Subject Settings sets the planner order above a row per subject with its color, default estimated minutes, Rename, Archive and Remove on a phone.
Subject Settings sets the planner order above a row per subject with its color, default estimated minutes, Rename, Archive and Remove.

4. Mark your time off

Tell Trellis when school is out: holidays, vacation weeks, and co-op days off. Curriculum imports automatically spread lessons around these days.

  1. On a computer, open Plan › Holidays & Time Off from the top menu and add your planned time off and dates to remember.
  2. On a phone, tap ••• More › Holidays & Time Off and add them there.
  3. On a computer, you can also add them straight from the Calendar. Open the Add Calendar Item tool, choose Planned time off or Date to remember, and set the dates.
Tip: Checking Plan as a school day makes that date count as a planned school day in the year's school-day math. It does not record attendance or move existing assignments.
Add Calendar Item names a date, sets its type and dates, and adds it to Scheduled Dates, where Thanksgiving week is already saved.
Add Calendar Item names a date, sets its type and dates, and adds it to Scheduled Dates, where Thanksgiving week is already saved on a phone.
Add Calendar Item names a date, sets its type and dates, and adds it to Scheduled Dates, where Thanksgiving week is already saved.

5. Optional: completion emails

If you'd like a quiet summary of what kids finished, turn on the daily completion digest and choose when it arrives.

  1. In Settings, open the Completion Emails card.
  2. Switch on Email me a daily summary of completed work, confirm the Send to address, and choose the Digest time.
  3. The email groups work by child and does not include exact completion times.
Completion Email settings choose the recipient and delivery time for one daily summary of finished work.
Completion Email settings choose the recipient and delivery time for one daily summary of finished work on a phone.
Completion Email settings choose the recipient and delivery time for one daily summary of finished work.

What's next

With the family set up, the fun part is to turn your curriculum into a year plan. It usually takes an evening, not a weekend.

Next guide →
Turn Any Curriculum Into a Year Plan
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