School Days, School Daze! Record Keeping

Kris at My Story: Life with the Engelman Family asked me about record keeping.  I can only answer this for myself, because each state's requirements are so different, but since she lives in Colorado too, maybe this will help.  I keep two records- school days and work done.  For school days I use a calendar and mark off each day that is done.  Now, I don't DO this everyday, I just do it every couple weeks or so, basically whenever I think about it.  In Colorado we are required to have 172 4-hour school days in one school year.  I and marking off every school day and when we get to 172, our year ends.

Here are the calendars I made for my attendance records.  

Feel free to print and use them.  

January-December 2011

August 2010 - July 2011

For records of work done- almost all of our units include either lapbooks or notebooks.  I keep everything that we do for those. That is our record for science, geography, and history.  Our math has one test for each lesson, and I keep those.  I am not keeping any record of phonics/reading.  I think next year I will be starting a book list, but for right now I am not concerned with that.

So what do I DO with all those papers?  I have a binder with dividers for Bop and CJ, and all of their papers that I want to keep for this year go in there.  Math tests, some special handwriting, a few of their worksheets for phonics.  At the end of the year I will go through that, decide what I want to keep and put them in a big three-ring binder, one for each kid.  I will probably only keep 20- 30 pages for each child or less.

Lapbooks are a harder question.  For right now I have them stored in a file-folder drawer.  They fit nicely in there and the kids can get them out and look at them.  Last fall I decided to try putting our lapbooks into Bare Books instead of file folders.  I like how organized and neat they are.  Those can just sit on the shelf like the other books, and I love that.

What about projects, things that are too big to stuff into a binder?  The only idea I have for this is to take pictures and add them to your notebooks.  So far we haven't had too many big things, but we are planning to make a clay pyramid next week, and we will be doing a lot more things like that as they get bigger.

Do you have any ideas for keeping bulky things that your kids make for school?