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Do any of you keep a portfolio of your children's work?
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Do any of you ladies keep a portfolio to record your children’s work and progress? I am interested in keeping one, but having a hard time figuring out how to organize it, particularly since at this point (we are only doing K right now), we aren’t doing a ton of written work. Many of the examples I’ve seen online have been from people followng a more traditional method of schooling, and I’m having a hard time sorting it out because so much of CM style is integrated and in these younger years done orally. We are overseas and don’t have any particular reporting requirements, so this would mostly be for our own personal records and reference.
Any ideas?
I made a portfolio of my son’s last year work (made it this September)… he was in Year 1. I was surprised really at how much I had to put in it.
Lets see
It starts with a Summary report from the organizer…
Then I have him MEP practice book pages
Then I have a few narrations that I transcribed while he gave the oral narration – not many, and mostly Aesop Fables.
Then I have his handwriting / copywork
Then I have drawings
I also have other stuff – a certificate for a Fire Safety program he did. His report card from swim lessons. If we had done the building stuff at the building stores (like we did previous years) I would have had his certificates from that too…. but we didn’t do any last year.
At the end I have the detailed report from the organizer
There are things he did that don’t have anything in the book…. Again, mostly stuff that was done orally.
I also made one for my 4yo…. it mostly has her Kindergarten math (she really wanted to do math, and was doing her brother’s… and MEP put out their K level math right then… so we did it.) and her drawings, and her swim report card.
With a bit more time/energy etc, I would add in some pictures.
Right now it has almost everything in it…. I suspect that in the future I will go through and pick representative work… I have 4 kids, and can imagine the space all the portfolio’s would take up eventually.
Our state requirements for homeschooling give us two options for assessment at the end of the school year: take the standardized state tests in the spring or have a state-certified teacher perform a portfolio evaluation. Many of us choose the second option as we can often have a homeschooling mom who has teaching credentials do this for us.
When we decided to use CM methods this year, I asked a friend of mine who has used the methods for several years how she incorporates everything into her children’s portfolios. She told me that every time they narrate orally, she makes a note of it in a folder. She keeps a log of the book title and the pages/chapter read on a given date, then just notates the child’s name and “oral narration.” She usually includes a comment such as “good details given” or “made prediction for next chapter” or “identified cause and effect in the passage” and such. She then places these logs in the child’s portfolio at the end of the year.
She also told me that she keeps a notebook to jot down dates of nature walks they take along with brief comments on each; she keeps a log of swimming lessons, ice skating lessons, etc. for Phys. Ed.; she takes lots of pictures to download to files for school projects, even things like baking or handcrafts. It sounds like a lot of work, but the toughest part is putting things together at the end of the year–she says they always end up with so many choices that it’s hard to convince the kids not to put every piece of paper into the portfolio!
HTH,
Sue
We use A Record of the Learning Lifestyle. It is used for what we actuall;y do verses a plan book. I do have a plan book, but this is for the child to fill out. I do most of it now becuase he is younger. It works well for CM. I staple in a few things here and there so we can see how his handwriting is improving and other fun things that he does. We are not required to keep track of anything, so it works well for us. I think it could work if you did have to as well.
Am I terrible for never keeping a portfolio? I have some things that my graduate did when he was younger. I’m glad I do so the others can see what he did, but I never keep anything they do. We just test at the end of each year. I guess I could keep a few of their impressive things.
I hope I never have to have anything but test scores if we ever go anywhere else!!
Hi MamaSnow –
I did a series of posts on putting together a portfolio and hope they can be of use to you. All the links should be here. We use our portfolio for both a means of evaluation and for a memento – they’re geared for those that use Charlotte Mason methods.
@art – I probably never would have kept one if it weren’t one of the choices for our school districts requirements. Now that we have three on our shelves the kids love to look back through them.
Best,
Richele
We are not required by state to make a portfolio. But, at the end of the school year I make a digital (because we live a million miles away) scrapbook for the Grandmas. It is composed of the following:
-photos I’ve taken throughout the year of schoolish times
-list/picture of books we read
-a few pages of math, copywork, drawings, nature study, etc that each child picked out to show from the year’s accumulation
-list of hymns and verses we learned
-a page written about our year and what we did and anything special
-a “class” photo
I put captions by everything and little comments to make sure they understand everything that was done and why. The Grands love it and the kids love going through their year’s worth of papers (after which we can pitch the unwanted stuff!). It has been a good way to cap off the year. And, encouraging for me as I see their beginning of the year work and compare it to the end of the year work.
What I did last year was to put papers (there weren’t a lot) into an accordian style file along with my spiral notebook that I wrote daily what all we did.
This year I have a binder with our daily plan and all. I have a binder for each child to keep their papers in (with dividers for each subject). I am also taking pictures of things (like our saltdough maps, art work, projects, etc) and keeping them in a “set” on flickr. I also purchased a digital audio recorder to record some of their narrations along the way so we can document the progress made by each child.
It’s not required but I feel better having it just in case I am asked for proof.
Kim
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