Homeschool Organization & Record Keeping
Now that you've decided to homeschool, picked out curriculum, and figured out a rough schedule, you're ready to begin! And at the end of the first week you have a huge pile of worksheets and s̶c̶r̶i̶b̶b̶l̶e̶s̶ art work - what do you do with it all? This page will attempt to explain my very simple organization of daily work and art pages. It sounds complicated to write it all out, but its very easy to use, I promise!
Art Portfolio
The art portfolio is the easiest, so I'll start with that. It's a simple concept - keep the good art each year, so you and your kids can look back and see how far they've come! To make it, I cut up a sturdy amazon box. I made each side about 12x15ish - big enough to hold printer paper and construction paper. At this age, we aren't using anything larger than that. I let each child pick out a fun color of duct tape, and finished the edges. I also layed a piece of construction paper on the cardboard before taping to give a nice cover, and the kids decorated it. I added duct tape handles. Boom - portfolio! Make sure that when you add the 'hinge' at the bottom that you leave about 1" or more between the sides to allow the portfolio to expand. I overlapped 2 pieces of duct tape to achieve this width.
As for keeping the 'good' art, you may have to be ruthless while the kids are in bed. There's really no way to keep every scribble, AND you know which pieces were made with intent and purpose, and which were truly just scribbles. I cull every few months.
School Binders
Each state has different laws about what homeschooling families must keep to prove that school work is being done. Please be sure to check with your laws as you begin homeschooling!! This method will work with all the states, you may just need to keep additional pages than the ones I have listed here.
The concept here is that it's too much work for Mom to open and close each student's permanent binder multiple times per day AND we don't need to keep every math drill page, either. So I have my 1.5" desk binder/planner which I use for all my students (luckily for me thats only 2, although it would be even more beneficial for more kids) then only the good stuff gets moved to the permanent record.
In my Teachers Binder for next year, I should have the following:
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Attendance Sheet for each student (required by nearly all states)
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Abby's section (in 2nd grade):
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Math
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Writing
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Spelling
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Drawing
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Other
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Anya's Section (in Kindergarten)
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Math
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Phonics
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Writing
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Drawing
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Other
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Each student section has tabs for the subjects listed above. Some states are much more stringent and will require proof that many more subjects are completed. Mine just wants a generic 'portfolio of work' to be presented if asked, so these tabs are enough for me to keep organized. I just fit whatever we do into those categories - no need for the geography drawings to be separate from the other drawings as long as it's all there. During our daily work, I keep my 3-hole puncher at my desk, and add things to the sections as we do them. Everything goes in - math drills, quick doodles of a concept, tests, spelling lists - whatever. My Teacher's Binder is the only thing that I need to keep handy. I use the dividers that have pockets on them for small pieces, worksheets that we plan to do that week, partial sheets that we haven't finished yet, etc.
Every few weeks, I take about 10 minutes to move things into the permanent binder. I use a 1" binder for each student, and the same sections. I just flip through the sections in my Teacher's Binder and only take out what I want to keep - all tests, and about 1-2 worksheets from each subject, along with anything that was really done well. All the other pages get recycled, and my Teacher's Binder is all cleaned out and ready for more pages!
I find it very convenient to put everything in one place, then clean it out every couple of weeks. In this way, you still have progression from the beginning of the year to the end - only the best work is kept from each few weeks - but you aren't overflowing with everything. If I put everything straight into their permanent binders and sorted it at the end of the year, not only would that take ages to do, but I would have to pay attention to dates to make sure that I had a sampling from all along the way. My method removes that step!
I use 2" post-it tabs at the top of my binder to help me find my frequently used pages, and one on the side that I place on "this week". The one you can't really see on the left is a "totals" page, where I transfer attendance totals for each month.
At the end of the year, I'll move the attendance sheet to each student's binder, along with their test-scores sheet, copies of any state testing, etc. If I want to keep my planner for my own perusal, I can move it into a small 1/2" binder (since I won't be using it all the time or adding pages) and all 3 binders (mine & 2 students) will move into a book case or box for storage. My big binder and all the dividers can be reused for the next school year!
I hope that you can take what you see here and adapt it to easily create a workable system for your homeschool!
