Category Archives: Homeschool Record-Keeping

Homeschool Record-Keeping

Summer Plans

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Karen is talking about plans. Karen and I, we like to plan. I enjoy planning so much I could easily spend all my time making the plans and never get around to carrying them out. Actually, that was a little battle I had to fight with myself in the early days of this home education adventure, and the "do-er" just barely managed to squeak out a victory—but the "planner" makes a vicious sally now and then and has to be thrust firmly back in her place.

I like planning so much I could give it up for Lent. That’d be a sacrifice with a real sting, let me tell you.

The perpetual joke on me, of course, is that the surefirest way to bring about a major family upheaval is for me to make some nice, neat, printed-out-on-grids plans. I am still laughing over the September I made a bee-yoo-tiful color-coded schedule for our days, a gorgeously detailed plan including everything from piano practice to nature walks, and so proud of this masterpiece was I that I brought it to our mothers’ meeting to show off—and the very next day I sprained my ankle quite badly at the park, and I spent the next six weeks mostly on the couch with my leg propped up. Ha. I believe my pretty schedule made a very fine coaster for my iced tea.

Undeterred, I am still writing out plans. This summer, I plan to:

• figure out how to navigate the beach with five fair-skinned children, one of whom won’t be able to hear me since his hearing aids aren’t going within five miles of the water, and another of whom thinks sand is for eating.

• finish our read-aloud of Swallows and Amazons, finally—this has been one of Jane’s favorite books for years, and I don’t know why it is taking me so long to read it to the other girls. It’s so deliciously good, but we’ve been reading it for months.

• have the girls continue to practice their burgeoning cookie-making skills

• learn the names of the trees in our neighborhood

• try to catch up to Jane in Latin

• see a bit of California

• make more plans for fall.

Charlotte Mason, Homeschool Record-Keeping

New Online Charlotte Mason Organizer

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The Simply Charlotte Mason folks have just debuted a new record-keeping tool designed specifically for Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. You enter the books you plan to use for each student, and the CM Organizer schedules the readings over the span of time you indicate. Then it generates daily schedules with clickboxes for you to check off. Another feature creates reports showing your progress.

The website has video demos of all the nifty features, and SCM is offering a free 30-day trial period so you can live with the organizer for a month and decide if it’s worth the $9.95/month subscription fee.

I am currently reading the Simply Charlotte Mason habits book, Laying Down the Rails, and will write more about that when I’m finished. Which, judging from the state of Scott’s back, might be a while.

General Homeschooling, Homeschool Record-Keeping, Latin

Answering Some Reader Questions: Latin and Record-Keeping

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Ana Betty wrote:

Some questions! Why did you choose the particular Latin programs
that you did? What about grammar/copywork? I find that this slips
through the cracks for me. If I rely totally on their narrations which
are not written (my 8 yr old twin sons), I never get around to typing
them out or recording them. We’ve used a couple of different things for
grammar/copywork and have yet to find a real good fit.

I’d love to see how you record your school plans and reading
schedules. I’m a little organizationally challenged but feel it would
really help the kids and I to have it all laid out.

(I’ll get back to the grammar/copywork questions in another post.)

Latin:

I talked a bit about the Latin program we’re using in this post:

Rose is using Prima Latina
because I like its simple format with manageable lesson size, and I
love that it includes Latin prayers. We are using the book and CD only,
not the DVD.

Jane completed Prima Latina a couple of years ago, and has resumed her studies with the highly engaging Latin for Children
(ecclesiatical pronunciation—although the DVD seems to use only
classical pronunciation—V is pronounced like W, for example—and when we
watch the DVD we have to remind ourselves to adjust the pronunciation.
The chant CD, which we use more than the DVD, offers both forms). All
of us are enjoying the chant CD and I’ve written before about how
delightful it is to hear five-year-old Beanie running around chanting
declensions.

Jane especially likes the LfC activity book, which is heavy on
puzzles, crosswords, and such. Puzzle = perfect, in Jane’s opinion. We
also scored an ancient, battered copy of Latin Book One for a few
bucks, and Jane is really enjoying it as a supplement to Latin for
Children. It has you diving right in to real paragraphs in translation, and for both of us beginners, that has been a thrill.

Midyear update: Jane continues to love Latin for Children. Rose, returning to Prima Latina after several months off during our move, is less enthusiastic. She enjoys learning the Latin prayers, but the rest of it (so very workbooky) leaves her cold. Latin for Children is really a step beyond her right now, so I’m pondering. I’ll keep you posted.

Record-keeping:

What I like to do is jot down a few notes at the end of each day, recording what we did. Even during our most unschooly periods, I have made a habit of this—usually dashing down book titles and activities in a daily planner of some kind. Despite my planner fetish, I don’t use a planner as much for planning as I do for recording.

This past year, I have (on and off) experimented with the blog format for record-keeping. I have a no-frills spinoff blog over at Bonny Glen, and that’s where I jot down our daily reading and such. It’s sloppy and informal, but I left the public settings in place because I get so much mail from readers who want to know "how do you fit it all in???" and I wanted to reassure these nice folks that we are by no means fitting it ALL in EVERY day. My hope is that in sharing our daily learning notes, I can help ease the worries of moms who read all the great ideas out there in the blog world and feel overwhelmed at the thought of making it all happen in their own homes. It doesn’t ALL happen in anyone’s home, and certainly not in this Lilting House.

One recommendation for others who decide to make their learning journals public: if you have regular out-of-the-house activities, I wouldn’t include them in your notes! YOU’LL know, looking back, that you had ballet on such-and-such an afternoon. No need to announce to the world at large that your house is empty at a certain time every week.

Another point about record-keeping: the notes I described above are separate from (and far more detailed than) the kind of records I am required to maintain according to the laws of our state. And of course I only give the state what I am legally obligated to, not a syllable more. Here in California, under the private-school provision I opted for (registering as a private school), I must have up-to-date attendance records to present if asked. I keep those separately, on a simple form, in a folder beside my front door. (Which reminds me, I haven’t checked off the "here" boxes all week. Oh, that cracks me up. Hey, kids, are you here?)