While formal records are needed legally, you should also consider making an informal record of your school year that your children can flip through when they grow up. Academically you need to keep separate records for each one of your children, but socially they should have some way to preserve memories to revisit in the future. It could take the form of a scrapbook or a video. Even a few things that your homeschool students used daily can be stored in a box. Here are some suggestions you can use, feel free to improvise and add your own ideas.
Annual Scrapbook
This would probably be the easiest to store and hand over to your homeschool students at a later date. You can add a sampling of their school paperwork, pictures of science projects. Then stick in some small hand crafted items and photographs of the regular homeschool classroom as well as special field trips photos and souvenirs for the year. Have each child contribute something to the scrapbook. You can even make one for each child if you have enough material to go around.
A Short Video
Since everything is digital these days why not create a video in the scrapbook style? You can use Movie Maker, or Stupeflix to make your own personalized video. Have the children hold up projects and worksheets and explain what they did in them. They can make short clips from field trips and add them to the movie. Use sound bytes from each child to describe what they liked best in that academic session. Have them make projections for the future. The video can be as long or short as you want it to be, however about half an hour’s duration would be ideal.
The Memory Box
There are some things that each child is super attached to while growing up, and a few years later he won’t even look at the same thing twice. These are more your memories than the child’s and you can use a large box to store such day to day items that the children would play with non stop. You can share the stories with them when they grow up. Or you could write down a brief history of the item and tag it in the box itself.
There is so much you can do. Please use these ideas as springboards and find out what works best for your family.
