There are many components to homeschooling, but one of the most essential parts is documenting your child’s learning.

Most governing bodies require some “evidence” of learning for homeschooled children. For instance, here in Alberta, we have a facilitator who visits our home twice a year. During her visit, she looks through our workbooks and the portfolios we’ve assembled.

Homeschool documentation can be overwhelming, that’s why I’ve compiled a list of 5 easy ways you can document your children’s learning!

PHOTO ALBUMS

Photos are a fabulous way to document learning! I set up my homeschool photo albums through Chatbooks. Chatbooks is a wonderful, easy service to use and isn’t labour-intensive like scrap-booking! Here’s how it works:

• throughout the year, I take pictures of my girls participating in homeschool activities
• each photo that I favourite is automatically added to our homeschool Chatbooks series
• once an album reaches 60 photos, it’s printed and shipped to my home
• the albums are customizable; you can even include photo captions in the album
• Chatbooks is affordable (only $10 for a 60 photo mini-book)

When our facilitator comes to visit, she flips through the photo books we’ve assembled and clearly sees all the learning that took place throughout the year. Plus photo books are a wonderful homeschooling keepsake!

JOURNALS

One of the best way to document your child’s learning is with journals. What I love most about journals is your child does all the work – you don’t have to assemble or gather anything.

Here are some journal ideas:

• writing journal
• nature journal
• art journal
• book journal (record thoughts about the books they’ve read)

Each of these journals serve as a wonderful reminder of what your child has learned throughout the year!

THE HOMESCHOOL PLANNER

There’s no doubt about it, my homeschool planner is the easiest way for me to document my children’s learning. From the reading logs, to the “natural learning” worksheets, I have everything I need to track and monitor what my children have learned throughout the school year.

Here are some specific sheets that I find especially helpful in my homeschool documentation:

• planning sheets (I check off the activities that we’ve done and cross off the ones we haven’t done)
• natural learning sheets (all the things we do which may be “unconventional” learning activities)
• attendance sheets (I track the days we homeschool)
• physical education tracker (used to record activities in each of the physical education areas)

VIDEO PRESENTATIONS

Another fabulous way to track learning is to make videos of your children demonstrating what they’ve learned. This could be in the form of a presentation, a skit, or role-play.

A wonderful way to keep your video documentation organized is to upload your videos onto YouTube. For privacy purposes, you can upload the videos as unlisted (this means the videos won’t come up in search results and can only be found if a link to the video is provided).

You can organize all the videos into a playlist as well. Also, your playlists can be set as unlisted. Setting up your videos this way makes it easier for you to review and share the videos you’ve recorded.

PROJECT BINS

Over the year my girls work on various projects. At the beginning of the year, I label a clear plastic bin for each of my children. As they complete projects, I add them to this bin.

These 16 Quart plastic bins easily store most of our projects for the year. They’re convenient, compact, and stackable!

This simple bin system serves a dual purpose; a process to document learning and a way to store project work.

These five methods of documenting learning require little time. By using one, three, or all of these methods, you’ll have a clear idea of your child’s progress, learning, and accomplishments.

Jennifer Bly

Author of My Kitchen, My Classroom: An Introduction to Homeschool and creator of The Deliberate Mom. Jennifer writes about parenting, homeschooling, her faith, and life with her husband and two girls. Jennifer has a Bachelor of Applied Human Service Administration Degree with a specialization in Early Learning in Child Care.