Record Keeping and Storage (part 9)

Thankfully, we live in a state that is currently very friendly toward homeschoolers and does not require record keeping or reporting of any kind. We know, however, that this could change at any time, so we have chosen to keep a record of the work we have done should we ever be legally required to show it. It's also good for our own benefit, to be able to look at a record of our work and say, "oh, that's what we did all year!"

In our family, we don't keep official grades for every subject until sixth grade (as in, writing down the grade of all assignments in a grade book of some kind and giving a letter grade for the class overall). Since our oldest just completed fifth grade, I have not had to keep a grade book yet. That will be something new this next year.

This past spring I was able to purchase a comb binding machine during a really good sale, and I made a comb bound book for each of the three older children of all their daily assignment sheets for the entire year. Each book is literally 36 pages that shows what they did each day in every subject.
I also made comb bound books of all their work in history, geography, literature, and writing. We used file folders for the front and back covers, in each of our children's assigned colors of course! :-)

These books hold everything from mapwork,

to coloring pages,

to writing,

to homemade charts. This is a homemade flow chart showing the 3 branches of government as set forth in the constitution.

Our daughter has a separate writing notebook where she has chosen to keep all her completed writing assignments, but our son G has his writing for the year in this comb bound book. Here is an example of a key word outline, which we learned how to make from our excellent writing curriculum, Institute for Excellence in Writing.

After making his key word outline from a paragraph in one of our history books, he closed the book and rewrote the paragraph from his outline. Here is his version of the paragraph:

Each of our children has completed a writing book called All About Me during their third grade year, and I think these books are destined to become treasured keepsakes! Each page asks a question or two about the student's life, and when the book is finished it is a record of many of that child's favorite sports, memories, things to do, vacation spots, family activities, subjects in school, and daily habits.

These comb bound books, plus the All About Me book, and the colonial lapbooks we did earlier this year are the sum total of what I am keeping as a record of this past year. It takes up this much space:

I have a labeler which I will use to label all the comb bound spines so that I can tell what they are when they are sitting on the shelf (in our basement). All of the workbooks go in the paper recycling bag, and all the hands on projects, once they are properly photographed and oohed and aahed over, go in the trash!