So… you have decided that you want to homeschool.
You have chosen the curriculum, set up a sound routine. You are up and running, children are producing tonnes of work in different forms: workbooks, letters, pictures, projects, experiments. And you start wondering – what about all this staff? Do I need to keep everything? Do I need to keep any records?
There are many reasons why every homeschooling mum should keep homeschool records.
- preparing a report for Local Authorities,
- tracking the progress that children are making,
- assistance in planning
- by preparing such documentation on an ongoing basis, you can see what still needs to be worked on,
- you clearly see how much you have done and how you have coped – it is a great boost of self-confidence!
And above all, for you and your children, it is a souvenir of your educational adventures together!
There are, of course, many methods to keep the records. From the more traditional folders with works, workbooks or, for all those techy people here – computer journals with photos and notes. For many of us, such documentation becomes just another tedious chore, and the children’s work lying everywhere begins to overwhelm us.
Is there a way to make this ordinary and boring tidying up of school work more enjoyable? Turn it into something that will be fun for you and your whole family?
Read on and decide for yourself what do you think about my method, which has evolved over the years and was created before I even thought about home education.
After all even if you do not home educate you have plenty of children’s work lying around!
Diary of emotions
First, I would like to tell you a little more about our family custom of writing a diary. Actually, it all started with the idea of keeping a diary of emotions. What’s this?
When my children went to kindergarten, I quickly noticed that if I wanted to maintain our native language, I had to take an active approach to it and develop a strategy. And while looking for various studies on multilingual families, I accidentally came across information about an emotion diary. Written by parents in their native language, it was intended to help a child going to kindergarten/school where a different language is spoken than at home.
Its main goal was to deal with the emotions the child experienced during the day at school. The idea was simple – you should record in the diary things that are important and pleasant to the child: words, pictures, simple objects (tickets, leaves, flowers, drawings).
Children should see that this is an enjoyable operation. That it is funny to draw caricatures of the participants of today’s walk. That everyone has sad faces in the picture because mum made a boring dinner. That a sibling made a good dessert (yum). That dad helped make chestnut people. Etc… You got the idea.
It was supposed to help the child build positive emotions around the native language, but we quickly came to the conclusion that such a diary helps build positive emotions around family life in general!
So in my diary the initial entries were very simple, not at all aesthetic: stick people having short conversations, simple sentences, sometimes some photos.
I wouldn’t do it every day, it wouldn’t be realistic. But once in a while it sounds doable. There was a time when I added entries once a week, and there was a time when it happened less frequently.
My initial attempts may not have been aesthetically pleasing, but my children found joy in embracing my language. Their enthusiasm reminded me that the journey is just as important as the destination, and they learnt that their perspectives matter.
Family diary
Over time, the diary began to evolve – I started adding more photos and various small souvenirs. These were leaves from the forest, train tickets, maps from the park, fragments written directly by children. The diary of emotions developed and enriched and became simply our family diary. When I don’t write anything in it for too long, you can be sure that the children will ask when I will start writing again.
But why write it all down?
Why not just use one of this smart apps where you add pictures and some notes – isn’t it the same?
Wel, I truly think it is not!
There is something magical in hard copies of any photo albums and how they act as magnets for all generations to sit together. There is the same strength and power in the written word. Nothing works better for a bad mood, depression and low self-esteem than a journal with notes from your life. From time to time, I simply take out one of my diaries and you can be sure that a crowd will gather around me eager to read and comment. There is always a lot of laughter and conversations, even about sad entries – somehow, in hindsight, everything looks different, the problems turn out to be not that big at all and, above all, we see that after sad moments, happy moments come back again!
School diary
This method of keeping a diary has been working at our home for years, so why shouldn’t I keep records of our educational adventures in a similar way? After all, education is not only about textbooks and workbooks. Projects, conversations, trips, workshops – they won’t fit in a folder and the photos themselves may not reflect the entire amount of work and emotions related to them.
A diary where, in addition to children’s direct works and photos of larger projects or trips, you write down your thoughts, emotions and happy stories, will serve you not only as school documentation, but above all as a memory and proof of how many unforgettable adventures and moments you and your children have experienced together.
What do I add to the diary:
- Fragments of children’s works (stories, reports, drawings)
- Project photos
- Entrance tickets, programs
- Little things found during trips
- Maps, brochures or postcards from the places we visited
- My own comments and the children’s comments.
And yes, today our diary includes both languages…
How often?
Ideally, at least once a week, you should summarize your school work. But of course life happens. Such a diary should be a pleasurable project. It should serve you, not become another burden.
Maybe you will find time just once a month to sit down and write down what happened.
This is still good enough!
I’m not a great artist, but for me such a diary is a way of spending time creatively. Some of my entries are more elaborate and decorative, like a beautiful scrapbook. Sometimes, however, it is just a record of the day without any decorations or fireworks. Simple and fast.
Oh, and my children help in the process: they write entries, choose the pieces they want in the diary. Sometimes they produce a mini family magazine which includes interviews with us (ha, ha who would know we could be celebrities!), inside jokes or highlights of the trip or of the holidays – whichever the magazine is related to.
After many years, I have gathered quite a collection that we all want to come back to.
Keeping a diary works well in our home – what do you think? What methods of documenting children’s progress work for you? I’d love to hear!
