Recommended Home Schooling Guidelines
Get Organized
If you homeschool, you must be organized. If your personality does not tend in this direction, you will learn. You will not survive home schooling if you don't.
As the teacher there are things you are required to do, along with optional suggestions that you should do if you want to be truly organized:
- You must keep an individual daily record for each child and record the work completed each day. This can be done by using a Teacher's Plan Book, a daily journal, etc.
- You must keep an individual record of grades for each child you home school. This will enable you to keep track of their progress and to refer to when filling out the required Quarterly Progress Reports and the Final Grade Report.
- You must keep up with daily attendance for each child you home school in order to accurately complete the required Yearly Attendance Report.
- You should keep a Reading List for each child to record all the books that he/she reads.
- You should keep all of your child's school work. If you have more than one child you are home schooling, you should keep their work separate. Make sure each child's work has their name, school year and grade level. Adding the date the work was done is a good idea too.
Tips To Help Get Organized:
- A binder for each child you home school is useful for keeping track of all reports (attendance, grades, progress, etc.), reading lists, tests, standardized test results, certificates of completed extra-curricular courses, awards of any kind, and any activities outside of schoolwork completed at home.
- It is also a good idea to take pictures of your child (which you probably do anyway) of their involvement in any activites, and file a copy of them with their school records.
- A standard bankers box, like those sold at office supply stores, is perfect for keeping a year's worth of school work. Eventually, you will have a box for each year of school for each of your children that you home school. If you need anything, you will know exactly where to find it!
If you start off prepared and organized, you will be more confident with your responsibilities. This will help ensure that both you and your children are comfortable and able to work in a an atmoshpere that is more relaxed and void of unnecessary chaos.
This in itself is a wonderful lesson for your home schooled children. By providing them with an organized routine and setting, your children are learning, through the example you set, to be an organized student and worker. This will benefit them greatly in most all aspects of their life, presently and in the years to come.
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