Home - Schooling

[Nymphy01]

I know of the simlogical hacks. (http://www.drealm.info/simlogical/sl/Sims2Pages/Sims2_School.htm)
I'm just... confused?

I'd love to make a school and have the children actually attend a school that I have made for them. I'm just not quite understanding the basics of everything.

Can anyone briefly describe each of the important items on that page?

(If this helps, I have BV, NL, and Pets.)

Thanks,

Nym :king:

[SimMegaptera]

I think those items are for making a school on your residential site, not making a home location for schooling that child's family. Some of the things there look like they're for getting other kids from other families and lots into your lot, for example.

Theoretically, all you need for homeschooling your active family's child is the homework desk (NOT the classroom desk that's on that page). If they study at the homework desk their grades won't suffer, which is what usually happens if they stay home from school. You might also want some sort of hack to stop the schoolbus from coming to that lot, just to avoid the annoying honking yellow thing that blocks your adults' carpool.

[gulhare]

Nymphy01
I dont really know what confuses you there. Its all explained in the texts.
But. You need
-a residential lot (and someone have to live there for this to work, I make it the headmaster)
-1 school bell (to start/finish school and this will also summon the children and any teachers you have assigned)
-pupil tokens for every child you wish to go in your school
-classroom controller in every classroom you have
-classroom door for every classroom (or the children will run all over the place)
-either the class table OR the class place. One for each child in the classroom

If you download these items you can do a trial and error also. The school bell, tokens and controller all have pie menues and you'll figure it out.
I dont use the School sign to stop the school bus to come since A. I never start school before 8 and B. Any children in the household will be set into Flexischool with the school changer (also from simlogical). Uniforms I dont use. And never had the need for crowd control.
Have fun with your school :)

[maxon]

Just a note - if you're not talking about home-schooling, you don't need a residential lot. I run both my schools (primary and secondary) on owned community lots. You need the school bell to summon the children, you need the pupil tokens and you need the table/desk/place for them to work on. you don't actually need anything else, not even a desk for each child. You use the classroom controller and doors to direct children to a specific classroom and give them a specific teacher. In my hood, there are only ever enough children at any one time to make up one class so I don't bother with that. My primary school only has one classroom (it's more than enough) with a nice playground, toilets and a canteen. The secondary school has two classrooms but typically only one gets used. Sometimes, I do have two classes there but as you get to control the children anyway, I find there's no need for the classroom controller. If you place work on their desks (in their classrooms), they get summoned there. The teacher is the person who owns the lot though when I need two teachers, I summon one in with the teleporter cat and make them selectable. I use the sign to keep the game from summoning sims to school or work and lock the front door when school is in session to stop customers wandering in.

[gulhare]

Maxon, thanks for a great idea. That will work better for my teen sims. Although Im not too sure about having to deal with customers though..
The residential school for young children where the teacher lives is a bit like it used to be, so I'll keep that. And not have to deal with a lot of adult sims sneaking around. Creepy.

[maxon]

Maxon, thanks for a great idea. That will work better for my teen sims. Although Im not too sure about having to deal with customers though..
The residential school for young children where the teacher lives is a bit like it used to be, so I'll keep that. And not have to deal with a lot of adult sims sneaking around. Creepy.

You're welcome - doing it on a community lot is not really that much of an issue. Because the lot never develops as a business, you only ever get three potential shoppers and, in my game at least, because I have so many sims on the lot anyway, the game doesn't seem to generate three shoppers at a time. Or maybe it's just because I ignore the front of the lot completely when I'm playing the school lot and don't see them. Anyway, with judicious use of garden walls and locked doors, the shopper sims don't get in at all. I guess you might be able to use the visitor controller to ban them now I think about it. hmmm....

[SingleClawDesigns]

I have to try SimMegaptera's idea about just using the homework desk for the kids because that would be awesome and totally better for teens so they're there 24/7 and the adults can actually hold careers.

[Sunbee]

Use the school changer to assign the child to flexi-school and the bus will not come. You can use the homework desk to generate extra homework for a child who is close to being stolen by a social worker and it brings up their grade when they finish an assignment. Of course homework is not fun, but it is very attractive the way Inge has programed it, so if the child is in a reasonable mood they will go do it autonomously.

For a custom school, I've always done them on residential lots. The meaner and more serious the teacher is the better the kids will behave. A nice and playful teacher means the kids will engage in more nonsense. Any place you don't want the kids to go to is best kept locked up (like the teacher's bedroom). From the home lot the child gets on the school bus and goes off, just as they normally do. When you play the school lot the children teleport in by their tokens when you tell the school day to start. You can also have townie children and teens assigned to the school. If you set it up for a boarding school (you'll see the option on the school changer) then you'll need beds and all. Otherwise you just need the desks. If I want two teachers at the school then I use a household with two adults--for instance, Samantha and Kimberly Cordial once ran a girls' school. Samantha had the children who were constantly up to nonsense, Samantha being nice, and Kimberly had the teens who behaved pretty well. I used just one classroom: in the morning the big girls studied actual educational activities: sewing, cooking, etc, in the afternoon they did desk work. The little girls were the other way around. The students are all controllable while on the lot, so that made it pretty easy.

[iCad]

I've set up schools using Inge's hacks on both residential and owned community lots. On residential ones, I have the resident teacher/principal live in a separate small cottage on the same lot. Then I just lock the door such that only he/she is allowed in. This works very effectively on monastery school lots, where the teacher is a monk who, obviously, will not have a family of hs own. On those occasions where the resident teacher did have a family, I used Inge's keyed doors so that the family could get into the house, but the students couldn't.

On community lots, I just use the visitor controller to ban pretty much everyone from the lot. The teacher(s) and students still appear and stay on the lot just fine. But before I had the visitor controller, I found that the "customers" weren't much of a bother, anyway. They couldn't get into the classroom(s) because it seems that the classroom door only lets in students and teachers. If the school had a swingset, visitors would just hang out on it, pretty much. :lol: During the recess period, I just used move objects to "delete" any visitors so that the kids could use the swingset. (Since I have the hack that allows you to enter build/buy mode on community lots, I can do the "delete" thing.) Of course, there are also hacks that ban adults from using swingsets, but I've never bothered with it.

For "homeschooling," I just use the School Changer and change all the kids to "Flexischool" once they transition to child. Then I basically lock 'em in their bedrooms and have them skill or engage in "educational" activities from 8AM until 3PM M-F. Their grades stay at "C" and no school bus arrives. I don't bother with the homework desk since my aim when I do this isn't grades but skills and/or badges.

[Nymphy01]

I know I sound dumb asking the questions but...
Thanks for all of the helpful tips.(:

I just was confused by all of the different options. > .<
iCad, you really helped me.
So every morning they need to call in the students around eight? Or does it really matter?

[Sunbee]

If you want the students you call them. If you don't want them (weekend, maybe?) don't call them. Doesn't need to be eight. You can have the school start whatever time you like. The kids will still leave and return to their normal home lot at the normal game times when you play those lots.
Your best bet is to set up a throw-away hood and play around with the options until you're satisfied you understand the tools.
iCad, sounds like you play unschoolars :-D

[Nymphy01]

Sunbee- Thanks :D
And actually, that's a great idea.

[iCad]

iCad, sounds like you play unschoolars :-D

Hey, I play what I do. :lol: My daughter will be 14 next month, and she's pretty much done with school. She knows more of everything than I do (and I'm not a slouch) about just about everything and she actively seeks to know more about some things. So if I could, I'd have her take the ACT test and be done with the whole school she-bang forever (YAY!), but according to our state's laws, she's too young to be done with school. So for another year we have to play at "schooling." I consider making her take care of livestock and mowing the lawn to be valuable agricultural education opportunities. :) It's the same for my Sims, when I make children take care of plants for a good chunk of the day in my big farm families. :lol:

@Nym: Yeah, what Sunbee suggested is a good idea for figuring out the school hacks if you want to use them. Set up some test lots, figure things out, see what works best for the way you play. I've come to prefer community lot schools, myself, but only because it's easier to have the "schoolmaster" have a family that way. With the Community Time hack, she/he goes off to run the school, but I can still play his/her family normally.

[Sunbee]

I know, silly school laws. :rofl:
We declared summer 'break' to be early this year because of moving, but usually we don't bother with a summer break. Math works so much better when you just keep going. (My kids don't approve, I didn't approve when I was a kid, but too bad for them.) Not that they really get a break anyway: even though the two older are with the grandparents this week they're still doing math and writing every day, they just aren't doing it at their normal desks so they don't think it counts.
Have you looked into early college enrollment for your daughter? I was going part-time at 14, my cousin was full-time at 15. Mom wouldn't let me go full-time to college at that age because she thought I'd miss out on the college experience. Since I wasn't in sports, in retrospect I wish she'd let me go sooner.
Back on topic: one reason why I love these hacks is that I have the ability to have my young sims actually learn things at school. Before I put these in I used a hack from Inge that gave skills from homework. Since sims don't need math, but do need logic, cleaning, etc in their lives, I think it's much more reasonable to have them learn those skills at school. Sometimes I wonder if the game developers were trying to make a point about the effectiveness of American public schools (you do get the occasional skill point from private school naturally in game), but then I decide I'm just abnormally biased. :lol: