Sunday, October 27, 2013

My Multi-Child Homeschool Binder

*This post may include affiliate links that help support my family. See my full disclosure here.*
 

When we made the decision to homeschool, the records keeping process didn't even cross my mind. Every homeschooling mother I knew (none of them had high schoolers at the time) used the Charlotte Mason (CM) method and didn't bother with tests and grades. They didn't keep records, right? I figured this was an easy way to start out, so I collected some recommended books, flipped through them myself and handed them to my children ( then 4rd and 8th grade). I remember thinking, "Wow, this is easy!" Ha-ha, forgive me as I chuckle at my own ignorance. Soon, they finished those books and looked at me with expectant eyes. I didn't know what to do. I hadn't made a curriculum outline, I didn't even have a curriculum! I had no goals for my kids for the year. Forget yearly goals, I didn't have a monthly or even weekly outline. After much, much searching, blog reading, review reading and interviewing fellow homeschool moms, I finally had an idea of what I needed to really get started and in what direction I wanted to go. While I couldn't commit to being a fully CM homeschool, I did want to mostly stay in that category. By the way, I was wrong. CM moms definitely keep records, just not the kind I was thinking.

My binder did not happen over night. In fact, it took over a year to finally get it the way I wanted and it still changes occasionally. But that's the beauty of homeschool, we are in a perpetual state of change- sometimes curriculum, sometimes rearranging the school room and of course the ever-changing records.

Some of my records are monthly, some are by semester and others are by quarter. Every sheet I use to keep track of lessons I found at DonnaYoung.org for FREE.

The first page is our attendance. I found this great software (again, FREE) over at FiveJ's. It's called Gradebook Plus. This super easy software allows you to plug in your courses for the year, write course descriptions, print reports, and my favorite feature, keep track of your attendance. As far as the grading goes, she has again made it really easy. You weigh the grades once and input your grades all year. It automatically gives you a cumulative percentage as you go. Love it! While grades aren't super important in the lower grades (at least not in my house), they can be imperative for high school. This is one homeschool tool I cannot do without.
 
The next page is our tentative schedule for the school year. I found this at Calendar Labs. You can customize the entire thing!!
 
Next are all the tabs...
 
Togethers-  This is where I keep track of the things we do together (obviously). Our fine arts (composer, artist, poet and of interest). I figure if I have a visual of how often we do things, I will realize when we haven't done something in a while and make appropriate changes. So far, so good.
 I also keep a reading log of the things I read aloud and the notebooking pages for each "together" we are currently working on. The notebooking pages I found at Notebooking Pages.com They have an excellent selection of high quality pages. I have bought several sets and have been happy with them all.
 
 
Teaching Schedules- These are all the teaching schedules for my freshman. As I mentioned before, some are by semester, quarterly and others, monthly. I am a pencil and paper kind of gal so I write everything by hand and later make copies to keep as records.
 
Oscar- I try to get the kids' weekly schedules written six to nine weeks at a time. This is where I keep those. I have two copies of everything. One copy to hand to the kids at the beginning of each week and the other is to help me keep them accountable. On Fridays I meet with both of the kids individually to assess their weekly accomplishments. Next, after Oscar's is Julia's tab which contains her weekly sheets.
 
Gradebook- Here is where I intend to keep the grades I assess for high school records after each nine weeks. Notice how I said intend? We are going into week 12 of our school year and I have yet to put anything behind that divider. It's a goal, what can I say?
 
Reading Logs- I keep all the reading logs for the individual kids here. Nothing special.
 
High School Forms- The 4 Year course study (outline), Courses of Study (specific), core 40 requirements for my state, and his activities (baseball, bass, volunteer)
 
History helps- I am no historian, therefore, I will take any help I can get. Here I keep freebies I find online, along with anything that may be helpful in the future.
 
Geography- This tab houses my ideas currently in the works for our Geography units. I'll share this later. :)
 
Nature- I keep all my printed Outdoor Hour Challenges (OHC) and other nature ideas here. Between the OHC pages and our Handbook of Nature Study, nature study is coming along much easier these days.
 
Fine Arts- First here is the list of books I made to go along with out monthly units.
 
Followed by this great  overview chart of art and music appreciation.
 
And this whole unit of art plans for the 1800's.  I found both this FREE unit and the above chart at Harmony Fine Arts.
 
The last couple of tabs are Ideas and Fieldtrips. They are pretty self explanatory. The Ideas tab contains things I have printed and would like to do in the future along with pencil written lists of ideas. Fieldtrip is exactly what it sounds like... fieldtrips.
 
Well, there it is, my homeschool binder. I hope I've given you some inspiration or maybe a few new ideas! Oh, if you're wondering about my tabs (another one of my homeschool tools I cannot do without), they are Big Tab Two-Pocket Insertable Plastic Dividers. The tabs actually stick out passed everything else!

2 comments:

  1. sounds like you are well planned. :)

    annette @ a net in time

    ReplyDelete
  2. This looks great! Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete