Good homeschool record keeping needs to be founded on knowing why you are keeping records. At first parents might think they only have to do it because of government requirements or potential threats, but, as usual, government meddling tends to obscure what is really going on. Think instead of what the goals of real education and learning are. They are not to fulfill some government check list. They are to help children grow into their place in the world by being primed for adult life and ready for the further learning that is necessary in any endeavor.

To set the stage for helpful record keeping, let’s consider how it can facilitate this real education. Good record keeping does this by:

When I first started homeschooling (about 30 years ago!), I tried journal record keeping. This is just writing down what happened each day. I did this for a few weeks, but as much as I like to write, to took way too much energy. There was too much to try to remember and it was not an efficient use of my time.

Instead, I began to develop my open chart system. I went ahead and divided it into subjects, but not because we were trying to do everything every day and not because education needs to be compartmentalized. However, having the visual reminder of these general categories helped me make use of blended and overlapping learning and discovery. It not only provided a framework that any government busybody might recognize, but it helped inspire me in guiding my children to consider different angles of a given topic.

My style of teaching my children (7 of them were taught at home from birth through high school levels), might best be described as semi-organized eclectic. I did not use a boxed curriculum. I searched out any resources that I thought would help my children both learn and enjoy learning. Sometimes this meant just leaving books laying around the house. Sometimes it meant having a supply of scientific or art materials to play with. Sometimes it meant adapting a particular textbook to a child’s learning needs.

While we did end up using formal math and science textbooks in the upper grade levels, I was not afraid to adjust the approach or the time frame for completion. Any curriculum or resource was treated as a tool, not the master to be placated.

We spent a lot of time reading together and then discussing everything from fiction to current affairs. I also spent time doing this with them on an individual basis, often as I was doing my chores around the house or yard. Just like children’s hands sometimes need to by busy while they listen or talk, I also frequently listened better when I was busy.

Approaching learning in a less rigid way not only got a better response from the children, but it meant there could be an “English paper” written on a math discovery or a p