record keeping

Tips and ideas for record keeping of activities, schooling and progress.

You may want a personal record, for those days when it feels like you’ve done nothing. Take a look through your education records and you’ll find that you’ve done more than you think.

Looking back at past records can also help you see progress in areas like hand writing and math.

It also depends on the kind of home educator you are. Whether you unschool or are a textbook homeschooler with bookwork all day and breaks like you’d have in a traditional school. Regardless of how you home educate, there are plenty of ways to keep records. In fact I often keep mine by looking back and reflecting on what we’ve done as opposed to planning and then ticking items off of a list.

Child's hand writing with pencil
Overhead view of boy reading
person drawn in marker
diary and pen

Grab yourself an old fashioned diary and just write a line or two per day. You can write as little or as much detail as you like. It’s a way to reflect at the end of the day and just see how much of your regular day, such as baking or going for a walk to the park, can naturally contain learning.

When keeping a diary of learning, you can simply write entries such as the following:

  • Maths – workbook activities and baking
  • English – workbook activities and reading
  • History – watched a documentary
  • Art – painted following a YouTube tutorial
  • Science – during our park walk collected different leaves
  • Boys played chess and built Lego
weekly planner app

Instead of a diary or word document, you may prefer to keep your records on an app on your phone. That may be a checklist app or an app like evernote to help keep you organised.

lots of kids paintings

Anytime a workbook is completed or art drawn or painted, store it in a folder or box. You can keep them for a couple of years before recycling. (Except for pieces that are particularly sentimental.)

You could also keep a folder or folio with random pieces of paper, arts or crafts for each school year.

Thanks to our member Jolene for writing this article.

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