Do you save all workbooks and work?

[chantald]

I live in NY which is pretty stringent in their reporting guidelines for homeschooling.. This is our first full year, prior to this we completed a 1/2 grade level.

Should I save all workbooks and sheets etc? Loose stuff I have in a few large binders by type.. and I have this pile of workbooks.. not a huge number.. his math texts, language arts etc..

Would it be wise to save them all, to "prove" that we were schooling should questions arise? I am currently in compliance with all my paperwork up to this point and plan on staying so...

Guess I am just not that trusting of the "system" but also don't want boxes of used texts hanging around for years either..

What do you do?

[kgianforti]

I'm in NY as well and I've been saving a lot of stuff as well as blogging a weekly report to keep record. We don't have to report yet so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all this stuff either.



So I will listen in on this thread!!

[zjande]

I've never even lived in a state that requires I do such a thing, but I do keep most school work "just in case" I ever need to prove that we do in fact home school. But also because it's so much fun to look back at my kids' previous work & see how much they've improved. Or to just ooh & ahh over how cute their preschool art was.

My oldest was an unschooler so I don't really have anything saved for her. My next child is finishing 6th grade now. I keep one large binder for him every year. I add most all of his completed work & tests to the giant binder that's labeled with his school year. We don't really write in any of our workbooks- I make copies of pages so that I can reuse each workbook for my subsequent kids.

This whole plan worked fine for me at first.... but now I have 6 giant binders that fill a very large bin in the garage. We still have 6 more school years to go, AND, I have 3 more kids (so far!) that I will be schooling in the future. At this rate, I will have to rent out a storage unit for all their ginormous binders!!

So, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm thinking that eventually I might have to take all the papers out of the binders, tightly rubber band them together, & stack them tight in boxes. That would take up less room. But still, after a whole pile of kids, will be many boxes!

So, I just don't know.

[ocelotmom]

One thing you could do would be to keep the most recent year prior to this one, and then keep representative samples for each subject (along with attendance records and any planning or syllabus type thing you've done) from various points in the year (monthly or quarterly) for the years before that. I can't say for sure that this would fulfill state requirements, but it seems reasonable, and would take up a lot less space than saving all work!

[luv-my-boys]

I am doing is Im keeping the table of contents for each subject we are doing plus a representative sample of work completed from each. For example our math workbook table of contents and the quarterly chapter "tests" in the workbook. I am also keeping any testing I am doing (for our own measure such as CAT) We move around (military) and I simply cant see keeping all used workbooks, the textbooks and non consumables alone are tons of storage bins. I then plan on scanning them into the computer and saving to CD after 2 yrs, for example the 2009 schoolwork will be scanned end of 2011 "school yr" and then tossing all paper except for testing stuff.

[MrsJewelsRae]

So far I've been keeping them for the following school year and then tossing them. I don't have to do any reporting at all, but in case I ever got investigated through CPS I'd like to have something to show them to prove we've been at this regularly for a while, kwim? I do keep an rough scrapbook of each year that includes a detailed "report card" as well as some placement tests to show he is progressing, etc.

[Marimami]

I am planning on scanning/photographing things and creating a book of the year in iPhoto, combining with photos, quotes, and anything else I think about.

Then I'll order two copies of the book--one for archival and one for looking at.

I scrapbook, but I don't have the time to make this with real paper/etc. so doing it digitally and having it printed is my best compromise.

Holli

[chantald]

I was just informed that one should keep these items for 3 years before discarding them.. as the school district has that long to request a review.. this is for my State, at least..