How detailed should my record keeping be?

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  • June 14, 2012 at 9:02 pm
    ibkim2
    Participant

    After one long year of wanting to homeschool and sending our son off to ps K waiting on the Lord’s perfect timing to start…I am now officially registered under an umbrella program and can start 1st grade anytime.  Yeah!

    My question is about record keeping.  I have a list of books and resources I plan to use each term.  I need to submit an attendance report and summary of curriculum resources to my umbrella school twice/year.  1 school day=4 hours of instruction in that day, with a total of 180 days required.  For my own records, do I need to keep a personal record of what was done each day or week?  For example,  Day 5 in school “read one chapter from Burgess Animal Book, did picture study on Mary Cassatt, did lesson 3 in Rightstart Math, went swimming, etc…”.  Or can I just mark off any day I spent 4 hours of instruction as an attendance day without recording the details of that day or week?  

    My thought was to just mark a calendar on which days we count as official school days.  Then for each term, keep the paper on which I wrote out each book/resource I plan to use.  When that term is completed, mark how much of each book or lesson was completed.  For example for science at the end of term 1:  “completed chapters 1-12 Burgess Animal Book.”  Is that sufficient?  Or do I need to keep a log of which days each chapter was assigned and completed?    

    I understand the SCM organizer allows for hassle free record keeping where a detailed daily report could be kept with ease.  However, I don’t think that is needed right now having just one student doing year 1, especially if a detailed report isn’t essential during the early years.  Perhaps when my 4yo dd starts into school, the SCM organizer would come in handy especially when dc reach higher grade levels and do more independant study.  Until then, I’d like to keep record keeping as simple as possible while being able to have enough of a paper trail to cover me legally in the unlikely event I had show officials prove that I’m actually teaching academics. 

    Oh, and I’ve read some parents write out the oral narrations in the younger grades.  Is this something that is highly advisable, or is it just personal preference for that parent?   

    Thank you and blessings.

    June 14, 2012 at 10:09 pm
    LDIMom
    Participant

    Yes mark a calendar of some sort and then keep a general outline of the books completed like you said. No need to list exactly what you did each day, though I tend to have something akin to that as I make out lesson plans for our older boys with a line (where they enter the date after completion). They are older and work quite independently on a lot, but this year I need to do a better job checking after them. We have some work to do this year especially for our 8th grader. Sigh.

    I don’t write out oral narrations for our 1st graders yet, but you could I suppose. Probably depends on his/her reading ability and where you want to go with all of that at that moment in time. You could use a passage from a current read-aloud though if you don’t want to have to write it out.

    I don’t use the SCM organizer. I tried it briefly and the learning curve was too much for me. I knew I’d never put in the time it took to learn it. If I had more time to learn it, I’m sure it would be great. I tend to make my own things on the computer, and we miss unexpected days here and there for medical stuff. I need a simple system too!

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