Homeschool record keeping has never been something I excel at. I begin each year hopeful that I’ll keep track of our schoolwork throughout the year. This would enable me to have an easier time with my summative report when we get to the end of the school year. Inevitably, all attempts at record keeping have failed me by October. By June I can be found in a puddle of tears as I despair that I will never, ever be able to write something about our educational gains for the year because there are none! We. did. nothing!
Obviously that’s not true. I tend to get a little carried away and sensationalize things when I’m worked up. Mountains out of molehills are a specialty of mine. We do accomplish a lot throughout the course of a year, but when you don’t write anything down it gets a little hard to remember anything at crunch time.
This year I’m trying something new. It’s October, and I’m still going strong, so this is already more successful than anything I’ve tried in the past! I opened a Goodreads account. That’s my big idea.
Here I can keep track of the books we read over the course of the year. I usually love simple pen and paper notes: I should logically be able to keep a list in a binder and leave it at that. While I generally prefer low-tech solutions, my answer to poor record keeping has not been a pen and paper list. I’ve tried that, and I have failed at it.
Reading is a huge part of school this year. We’re using the Five In A Row literature based curriculum, and reading aloud plenty of chapter books during Morning Time. After we read a book, I rate it on Goodreads. That’s it. Then it shows up in my profile and at the end of the year I’ll have a list of what we read and how much we liked them (or didn’t). For our Five In A Row books, I’m also writing reviews that give an overview of what we learned and discussed in light of the story. This is helping me keep better school records, and provides me with a fun challenge of writing good reviews that sum up our experience with each story. Writing a public review makes me put more thought into it than if I scratch something down in my school binder.
**Ohhh, I love technology….always and forever**
If you want to see what we’re reading, you can check out my profile on Goodreads. Go easy on my reviews, I’m new at this! 🙂