Homeschool portfolios Charlotte mason style

We live in Ohio & have annual portfolios evaluations. We have used a teacher who reviews portfolios from all styles & methods of homeschooling, so she has suggestions for unschoolers to show what they’ve done. We sort of followed that last year since we didn’t have a lot of worksheets & such to show her.

It worked out well because I just gave her book lists (per her suggestion) for many subjects, and I just provided a statement that indicated my children having given oral narrations for the books. I briefly detailed whether each child had demonstrated good comprehension & understanding of the material read, and I stated whether I felt their narrations had kept pace with their learning abilities (or perhaps had improved over the course of the year).

I also included a few pictures of science fair projects, a list of items found & notes from our fall scavenger hunt, a list of nature studies, picture studies, and composer studies we did (including a drawing or two from nature walks), certificates of participation/completion for their swimming lessons, Keepers at Home group, music lessons, anything like that.

At the end of the teacher’s evaluation form we used to submit portfolios, she suggested that each student write (or dictate) a paragraph or two about their favorite/most interesting topic of study during the year. I had my kids do that, and I thought it was a nice touch. One wrote about doing online research about the U.S. presidential election, another wrote about attending a Military Timeline event that featured battle reenactments, and the third child wrote about how much she enjoyed science and mentioned some of the topics we read about.

Hi caycecronk,

We have to show portfolios to our school district each year. I’ve posted lots of pictures, how we do it, and what I’ve learned over at my blog:

Portfolio posts

Though I pick the samples of work for most of the subjects, they are in charge of the rest and they get much more creative with them than I ever would. They work on them throughout the summer, usually on rainy days and they love to look back on them. 

HTH,

Richele

Hi Richele! This is at least the 3rd or 4th time I’ve come across your blog in a post, and I want so badly to check it out! Is there a way to access it?

Hi Amanda and Paula,

Oh, it’s been a few years since I’ve tended to that blog.  I’ve opened public access back up on it though so you should be able to see everything.  I hope it is a help.

Those little boys of mine now are both taller than I am.  The oldest just finished his sophomore year and was just dropped off this morning to take a college entrance exam.

Warmly,

Richele