Record Keeping - how do you do it?

[Alvie]

We are almost through the Kindergarten year with my ds who is 6yrs. At first I made a nice schedule, planned each day out and what we were doing etc. for a few weeks in advance. This worked well for several weeks...

Then, because I also work from home and it is sporadic - meaning, sometimes I need to work in the mornings, sometimes I get mornings free, sometimes I'd need to work an 8 hour day, sometimes I'd have a week with no work at all!...it seemed that I would need to modify my own schedule, we would sometimes skip days, and then my whole plan would be off.

So....now I have a type of plan with the aim of getting 5 'school days' a week (this could mean Saturday and Sunday if we missed a day during the week)...and I don't write in beforehand what I am doing. I follow whatever curriculum we are on, and make a note of what we did on which days.

I'm thinking this is really a waste of time...apart from just record keeping...and also, not having any sort of plan to stick to sometimes makes me unmotivated to keep up with the curriculum! (sometimes I need the structure of having a set plan to work from!)

Anyway...how does everyone else do this, keep motivated, keep organised and work around the sometimes sporadic homeschooling environment?

TIA

Alison

[WhaleinGaloshes]

This is my plan for my kindergartner...we also found that "do X at Y day/time" didn't fit us, very well. I struggled/experimented a while last fall to see what was going to work for us and this is what I came up with:

I took Donna Young's blank checklist and listed all the different types of activities we do, grouped by subject. I noted in the margin abbreviations for materials (I don't know why, it's not like I'd forget, but whatever.) After a couple trial runs I finalized a target number of 'repetitions' per week I'm shooting for and put that by each subject group.

Then in a week (I have 6-day 'weeks' on there and lump weekends in one box), I check off a box when we do something that warrants.

Over time, it creates a kind of scatter plot that keeps me on track, showing if I've under or over shot with a subject frequency, if something's been falling off the radar, etc.

I don't usually plan ahead "this on this day" but depending I do often go through for various reasons and I mark something I plan to get to in a day with a circle. (I can see if I'm hitting those, too.)

This system is working for me in that it's totally flexible around what else is going on but keeps an accounting. For now, because DD is young, she's really only peripherally aware of it but I could see an older child checking it off himself. It's a kind of "this is what we're aiming to get done, but we can pick good times to do it" vibe, to me.

Here is a link to the file I've got now...

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B3A...ut=list&num=50

I also uploaded a 'used one from a pretty tumultuous period this past summer which shows the picture it starts to illustrate...

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B3A...ut=list&num=50

That's what we've got going on now.

[Alvie]

Thanks whaleingaloshes (cool name!)

I will look at that. I have not looked at any type of 'homeschool planner' books, so have no idea what is available!

Sorry - edited - I can't seem to open any of your links...it says "Sorry, the page (or document) you have requested is not available.

Please check the address and try again."

[WhaleinGaloshes]

My apologies. GoogleDocs has always worked for me in the past but today it failed the first then worked the second time.

If the GoogleDoc decides to work, the actual .xls file is uploaded there. Here is a screenshot of it, anyway:

http://i33.tinypic.com/1jsyeg.jpg

'used':

http://i36.tinypic.com/2mqolef.jpg

[karika]

We are very sporadic, unplanned and spontaneous sort of people here. I made a database to record what we worked on each day. I have a column for date, time started, time ended (which I estimate for actual time spent doing stuff since she does not work continuously), curriculum or resource used, her vibe (to describe how she worked on things, like if she was interested, sleepy, argumentative, asking for more...), notes (for myself, like if she had trouble with syllable worksheets a note to run off more), then a column for every subject we are doing. I am mostly using Lesson Pathways (it is completely free! http://www.lessonpathways.com ) which I think I found a link for here in the resources, but I am in a state where I receive allocation too so I have some programs coming in the mail also. I have so many pages bookmarked with excellent learning games and worksheets you can create or print off theirs... so I have a stack of worksheets printed off for her when I am busy with the other child or if she is up while I am sleeping (her dad is home full time right now too), she does those independently, then when we get a time block together I get online with her beside me and we move through a unit (part, or sometimes a whole one).

So I track it all in a database. I like it because I can add to it, edit, make reports, etc... I only have microsoft works, but it is sufficient.

[elizawill]

i don't write what we do beforehand either. i entertain the thought of it every.single.year, but always revert back to just writing things down as we go along. before the school year starts, i'll usually look at our curriculum choices and just divide the lessons by 180 days where possible. so for example, i know writing with ease is 4x week, science & history are 2x week, etc. based on this info, i do plan out what subjects we'll cover on which days though. i also try to make sure it's not overload...so my son usually does 5 things daily, while my daughter does 6. school is usually no more than an hour for him & 2 hours for her. i usually make our own record keeping/planner stuff, but someone recommended the student planner from the target dollar bin. i bought two of those & just use those daily. i also keep an attendance sheet:
http://highland.hitcho.com.au/attendancecalendar.pdf

and a reference sheet of what subjects we cover throughout the week.
http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/2139...20-pm-16k?da=y


hth.

[CherryBomb]

I do ahead and write out brief lesson plans (very simple, like under math column "pg 15&16" under Latin "Lesson 1 pg 5 and drills"). I also scheduled around dd2, who's in kindergarten at public school, so that she and dd1 have the same days off. I don't schedule according to times, though. When we're busy we just get whatever we need done out of the house complete and then start school later. I try to keep on task to my lesson plans because I'm really disorganized and it's too easy for me to fall into a rut of only doing the bare minimum. I also track attendance on my lesson plans (attendance is the only thing I legally have to keep records of in Indiana).

[PGTlatte]

I use an inexpensive student planner that has a section to write in for each weekday and smaller sections for the weekend days. I just record everything we do there. I also keep a googledocs spreadsheet with each activity recorded by date and coded for subject area. Our state requires instruction in six subject areas so I made up six codes. When I want to write a summary report for a period of time I can sort the sheet by subject, then date and write a summary paragraph of activities/work done for each subject area.