The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [66]
The matter of learning is pretty much the same. It’s obvious when kids are learning, and it’s a rare parent indeed who cannot tell whether kids are learning as they should be. If your kids are interested in the world around them and eager to follow their interests, if they know and can do more now than they could last year, then they are probably doing just fine. If you keep at least some rudimentary records of your kids’ skills and abilities, you’ll probably never doubt it.
Like every other aspect of homeschooling, the kinds of records you keep depend on your homeschooling style and your particular family’s needs. In addition, the state you live in may have something to say about the form and detail of your records and may require some sort of standardized testing for your children. You may find that the information school officials want from you tells you very little of substance about how your children learn, so that information you accumulate for your own use will look completely different from your “official” records.
To determine what kinds of records you’ll keep, the first thing to do is figure out who you’re keeping records for:
For yourself? You may want to have some record of milestones in your children’s academic lives. Just as you might have noted when they took their first steps or lost their first tooth, you might enjoy having a record of when they first wrote their names, read their first words or first books, or figured out how much money they’d saved. On those occasional bad days, it can be nice to have something to look at to prove to yourself that they’ve been learning.
For your children? Your children may appreciate having the same sort of information about their childhood when they are older, and a look back at their lives through your eyes could give them a completely different perspective on their experiences. Again, having some proof of how they’ve spent their time can help during those stretches when they doubt themselves and their competence.
Education officials? Your state or school district or the administrators of your home study program may have quite specific requirements about the information you need to keep. Such requirements can be easy to comply with, or they can involve a considerable amount of work to put together.
Admissions officials or future employers? The specific needs of these groups can be hard to predict, but you may want to collect letters of recommendation from music teachers, sports coaches, and other adults who can testify to your children’s abilities and character. Any material demonstrating their suitability for a future occupation or other situation can be useful to have available if needed.
No, no, no. (Come on, does anybody actually give grades?) I don’t keep anything specifically for records, although we have stuff around that the kids have done. I could pull something together if we needed to.—Jill, California
I keep a narrative journal of our daily activities and events. I also do a six-month summary for each girl, in June and December. In completing the daily narrative, the girls and I use our calendars, their personal diaries, trip records, photos, and such—anything that serves as a memory jogger to help us show the breadth and depth of what we do. The records are designed to be maximally useful for the girls—I don’t write with some future school official or admissions officer in mind. I feel confident that I can write up a presentable transcript if necessary.—Carol, California
No records, no grades. I don’t care about any evaluation—I can see how much he knows, and I can see that he compares well with his school friends. I once took him to a math center for an evaluation and suggestions and was sent away with the comment that we were “way ahead of the game” and should just