Record Keeping
Home educators sit right across the whole continuum from being highly structured through to completely unstructured. Some plan out the year’s learning, dividing it into termly goals and weekly lesson plans. They might file completed math worksheets, written work and other notes into a folder so that they can see how they are faring week-by-week against their plan. Others may not work to any kind of schedule except for a rough idea of where they are heading in general, taking lots of photos while being present in the moment. Both of these approaches are absolutely valid.
As with everything homeschoolers do, each individual will have their own unique ideas about how they think about, reflect on, and record their child’s learning journey. Many home educators create an informal system, annotating and filing digital photos. For others, a more comprehensive scrapbook is something they enjoy putting together. Some parents keep a diary of what they do each day, jotting short notes about their activities so that they can reflect back and see the progression their child is making over the course of the term or year. You can develop your own unique record-keeping system or canvas the opinion of other home educators through one of the networking groups.
Keeping even a small record of your child’s activities is useful for those times when you’re feeling like you aren’t achieving anything (you can look back and see how far you’ve come) and it may also be a sentimental record for your child down the track. Additionally, if your home education programme is ever reviewed, it does help to already have some historical records you can draw upon so that it isn’t a mad rush to get evidence of your activities. However, if this is the only reason you keep records then it will soon become a chore.
There are many planners available online or from bookshops so ensure you do your own due diligence with regard to what type of planner will suit your circumstances.
We have developed some planning and record keeping tools which members are free to utilise, see our Members Only area
A member tells us how she creates a printed homeschool yearbook for each child
“Having gone through Playcentre with my three children before home educating, I was quite used to writing learning stories for their Playcentre journals. I noticed that my children loved looking through their journals, marvelling at the photos and what they did earlier that year. When we started 'officially' home educating I decided to continue this tradition and keep a Home Education Yearbook for each child. Essentially it is a bunch of photos and short stories about what we get up to each week.
I have a good camera on my phone and take photos of what the children are doing - whether it’s at home or out and about. If they produce any particular writing, art, maths, or other work, I also photograph that. I sometimes make notes in my phone about any particular topics we’ve discussed - especially when I’m sitting at the side of an activity my children are engaged in. I have my children in mind when doing it and try to make it interesting. It’s not a diary though, I don’t record everything we do in a week - for example, when we go to our Wednesday afternoon sports group (which we’ve been going to for over a year), I don’t write that down every week; I just put it in the first time for the term, or the last, or one session when I might have taken some photos.
I rely on photographs to jog my memory and I usually update the yearbooks once a week. As my children tend to do the same activities, I often copy and paste between their books. I end up creating an average of two or three single-sided pages per week (each child), the vast majority of that is photographs. I usually keep it up over the school holidays, especially if we have some fun things planned. I also put in all the photos from a family holiday if we go away.
I use LibreOffice Writer (which is a free program, similar to Microsoft Word) - I’ve tried using specific story-type programs but I prefer the flexibility of layout provided by word processing software. At the end of the year I email a couple of printers for quotes, then I save my documents as PDFs and drop them to the printers on a flash drive. The books are printed on standard A4 sheets, double sided, and I get them bound with simple spiral binding. If money is tight then I budget for the printing well before the end of the year.
I admit that I have always enjoyed scrapbooking and writing stories. I’m also confident doing formatting and layout on a PC. The children love seeing their yearbooks which I give to them at the end of the year. They are amazed at all we have done and how much they’ve grown and learnt. The books then lie around on the coffee table for a couple of months so the children can show grandparents and other family members (there is nothing like three full books of “proof” to reassure anxious relatives that my children are learning all the time!!).
If you are thinking about doing a yearbook then first consider your motivations. If you are doing it for any reason other than to provide a valued family record then you probably won’t stick to it and it will become a chore. You will need a system that suits your skills and a time each week/month to work on it. Make sure your phone has a decent camera or buy a small digital one off TradeMe. And most importantly, budget for the printing if necessary, as you don’t want to do all of that work and then only view it online!”
A member tells us how she creates a hand-written homeschool yearbook for the family
“I have been doing a homeschool yearbook type thing for the last few years. We loosely follow the school terms and I tend to have some sort of plan based on the kids’ interests, this can involve workbooks or be self directed. We take the third term of each year 'off' as we are dairy farmers - so we are more focused the other three terms to compensate.
I have just the one all-encompassing book, kind of like a family story. I do it by hand, not on the computer - I started doing it on the computer at the beginning but it just didn't work for me as often I will jot things down in it in a spare moment. I do it for most school weeks of the year and just leave plenty of blank pages to stick extra things in that have some significance - like holidays snaps, brochures, random notes, or art that I want to keep. The book has evolved over time to suit my style. It started as a bit of validation that the kids are learning all the time and, by recording things, I became aware of just how much learning was going on. I also thought it would be valuable to have if I ever had an ERO review.
I use templates, some of which I designed myself and some from an online site. At the beginning of each year I print out all the pages on our home computer and have them bound at Warehouse Stationery (costs about $7 I think), divided into four terms and ready to fill out. So at that stage it's just a blank book/dairy-type thing. The photos are just printed out on our computer and glued in. It’s my Sunday evening job.
The first pages in the yearbook are my planning pages for the term, this helps me ensure I have the right resources on hand. I have one for each subject covering the ten weeks of the term. I'm not a strict planner, but I find if I spend time doing some ground work then I'm ready to go.
Following the planning pages is a weekly page for each child recording what we actually did in all of the subject areas - this is our record of learning. Of course there is plenty that's not recorded, but I try to record the important/meaningful stuff.
Then I have the page I do at the end of the week (my favourite part). This page is decorative with photos capturing the week's highlights, this ensures our yearbook is not just "bookwork" based. I include photos of art, snippets of writing, maths, etc. We sometimes pull out these books and look over these pages because they hold so many memories.
It is such an inspiration to look back on and realise we have done so much (especially when I feel like we are getting nowhere). Now that I have done it for a few years, I'm so glad I did. It also saves me from keeping a whole heap of work/art the kids have done. It’s also awesome to pull out to show people who might be "disbelievers" lol!
My top tips? Make your yearbook easy and accessible to fill in so that it's not a chore; and make it work for your learning style.
