“But ask the animals, and they will instruct you; ask the birds of the sky, and they will tell you. Or speak to the earth, and it will instruct you; let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? The life of every living thing is in His hand, as well as the breath of all mankind.” – Job 12:7-10

Welcome back! The sun is shining today! It wants to become Spring but we just aren’t there yet. We actually had snow here two times this week in my neck of the woods. Literally, I live in the woods in the valley of a mountain region here in Pennsylvania. This is the coldest April that I can ever remember. How I long for the sunshine and the flowers and the yard coming to life and the trees full of leaves. Spring can be so beautiful and what a representation of new life and of God’s wonderful creation. The downsides to all that is blooming is allergies and coming about of the nasties, like ticks and mosquitoes. Most people aren’t bothered by mosquitoes or perhaps the pollen spores floating about, but sadly, I am not one of them, being allergic to both! Still I welcome the new season if it would ever get here! Living in a wooded region, everything just bursts into life come Spring. Trees bloom, flowers grow, and the grass becomes green again. The woods become a flutter with the birds and small animals and the deer, who never really vanish during winter, make more appearances to snack on those plants you work so hard to grow! What better time to see and appreciate the Creator’s masterpiece!

So today I am going to share with you a little more about my homeschool experience. If you’re new to homeschooling, so am I. With a little patience, some planning, a lot of reading and an enormous amount of prayer, you can do it! I wouldn’t expect most moms or dads or grandparents (whoever is supervising the education) to dig as deep as I have. Here’s the good news: you don’t have too! I have done it and so have countless others and they too have shared what they know, online. Anyone who knows me, really knows me, knows that I like to be prepared. I like to learn new things. I like to study and research new topics and ideas. I fill my head with all sorts of stuff! This stuff in my head gets very overwhelming sometimes. Do I drive myself crazy? Yeah, maybe sometimes. However, if my filling my head helps someone else, than driving myself nutty is worth the effort. Not that I feel proud that my head nonsense helped someone, because God is the one who made me just who I am. God gave me the words to say and the brain to fill up.

So my last post I gave you a peek at my weekly planner, and it looked like a mess. It didn’t start out that way! Today more useful things to keep yourself organized and sane. I have 2 methods of tracking my children’s grades. I don’t soley rely on computers and so I keep a hard-copy version in a tiny dollar store notebook (binder, as my kids call it). I contemplate if I want to continue with double records, though I think it is good to have a back up. So there are software programs that you can buy or pay monthly or yearly fees for and they likely have more features than the programs I have tried/use. I’m going to direct you to the first one I tried. It was adequate and would have done the job, but it was online only and being as my internet is not the most reliable I could not check in on it every day. If you do not, it becomes a hassle to go back and add attendance for the days you didn’t log in. So ultimately I found another program that is downloadable and I can access without the internet. Homeschool Skedtrack is 100% free and it may very well work for you. The one I am currently using is a free, albeit older, version of a program that you can buy (and uses the internet). It’s from Homeschool Tracker and is called their basic edition. They no longer support this edition or update it but I can tell you that it works perfectly fine on my Windows 10 laptop and does what I need it to do. One downside, for me, is that it does not allow for weighting grades and it does not round percentages. The Homeschool Skedtrack does both of those.  Below are screenshots of Homeschool Tracker Basic.

In the above image is the screen where you would add assignments, due dates, and enter the grade and completion date. From the drop down menu you can view all assignments from any subject in the time period you choose.

Now here’s a look as how I record in my notebook. I begin with something that looks like the first image and I end with something that looks like the second image. The form in the second photo is from the Alpha Omega Lifepac teacher guides. It makes it easy to record the grades for each workbook and I have adapted its use for the subjects that I am not using Lifepac for. If you were to purchase the CLASS lesson planner from Christian Liberty, it too has forms to use for different aspects of record keeping.

Next, it helps if you have a place to keep all these books, notebooks, and documents. My house is very small and we had already outgrown it before adding more stuff – homeschool stuff. We do not have a separate room to keep it all or to dedicate to a “school” room. When you have a tiny place you get creative about where to store or hide your teacher stuff and student stuff and all your supplies. With that said, I have taken over some cabinets in my dining room and living room and as luck would have it, we obtained a free 2 drawer metal filing cabinet which we actually found a mostly out of the way place to keep. Sure when visitors come they will see school things around, like the filing cabinet, but our school room is our house, and it’s outside, and it’s all around the places we visit, so it is what it is.

Inside this filing cabinet I keep my teacher guides and tests and quizzes as well as various forms and supplies as well as some other reference books. It also houses specific files for my children that contain medical documentation (I make copies of everything) and any achievement tests including their former PSSA test results when in public school. I also have some former public school report cards and this where I will keep their grade records for homeschool. This is more than you really need to do in the state of PA and I reckon most homeschooling families don’t take this extra step. I like to have everything I think I could need for the future to avoid any possible issues or at least help. Just because I want to keep homeschooling my children doesn’t mean that’s what God has planned for me and in the event my children need to return to a brick and mortar school, I’d like to have what I need. This is probably a case of my over-organizing.

(You never know what your day is going to throw at you and literally as I was working on this post a spider just threw itself at me. What was I saying about Spring and things coming to life? One of God’s creations, but one that freaks me out!) 

Finally (I know you’re likely bored by now), I also have begun to put together my children’s portfolios. I will not complete these as I want them to be part of the process. They don’t need to be enormous notebooks full of every work your child did, but they need to show progress and give your evaluator a scope of what your children did over the course of the year. This is going to be challenging, no doubt. Sorting through every piece of written work, every art and science project, and all those quizzes and tests and even more daily work activities is no easy task. There is no manual or rules on how one must put together a portfolio. The law provides us with a few details that it must it contain. Some evaluators will request or specifically look for special things to be in the portfolio, but please understand that this is not law. The law states this,

“a log, made contemporaneously with the instruction, which designates by title the reading materials used,  samples of any writings, worksheets, workbooks or creative materials used or developed by the student and in grades three, five and eight results of nationally normed standardized achievement tests in reading/language arts and mathematics or the results of Statewide tests administered in these grade levels.”

Here is a good suggestion about how to put together your child’s portfolio. If your child is graduating this year than there are specific requirements to meet in order to graduate and receive a diploma. A quick note about diplomas ; it’s legal and acceptable for a parent-issued diploma but there are other methods of giving your child a diploma if you want too. Keep in mind that a diploma is just a document stating you’ve graduated. The diploma is not a substitute for a highschool transcript. The transcript, in my opinion, is far more important and necessary if your child intends to go on to another institution, like college. Most employers, in my experience, do not even ask to see your diploma, just if you graduated and when and from where. If you’re interested in learning about your diploma options this is a good place to start reading about it.

If you have suggestions I’d love to see them in the comments section. If this post has helped you in any way feel free to let me know that too!